So, after years of denials and double-speak, Trinity Mirror has been forced to come clean. Its announcement of legal settlements with 10 people confirms that its staff were responsible for intercepting voicemail messages.

When the phone hacking scandal first broke it was clear that the News of the World was not the only paper involved. But the publisher ignored claims that the practice had been common also on the Sunday Mirror.

In an extraordinary ostrich-like response to the allegations it even refused to hold an internal investigation.

Indeed, when the lawyer Mark Lewis filed four hacking claims against Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) in October 2012 the company replied with a po-faced statement in merely noting "the allegations".

It had yet to receive them at the time, but even after having done so its responses were consistently indifferent. Its public statements became something of a mantra:

"As we have previously stated, all our journalists work within the criminal law and the Press Complaints Commission code of conduct."

Note that deliberate use of the present tense. At the time, I thought the Mirror response to Lewis's action was altogether too relaxed.

I concede that it was understandable in commercial terms, because the company's share price suffered an immediate reverse, but what about legality and ethics?

My mind went back to the stone-walling statements made by Trinity Mirror's former chief executive, Sly Bailey, who did not treat the hacking allegations with anything like the seriousness they deserved.

She even told the Leveson inquiry in January 2012: "I don't think it's a way to conduct a healthy organisation to go around conducting investigations when there's no evidence that our journalists have been involved in phone hacking.

"There was no evidence and we saw no reason to investigate. We have only seen unsubstantiated allegations and I have seen no evidence that phone hacking has ever taken place at Trinity Mirror."

They were, of course, unsubstantiated because she didn't make the necessary inquiries. Her successor, Simon Fox, also failed to hold a rigorous investigation when the claims were made.

Then there is the little matter of Trinity Mirror's legal director, Paul Vickers. Did he not tell the board to treat the allegations seriously? Did he not press for an investigation? If not, why not?

And isn't it ironic also that Vickers went on to be the architect of the new press regulator, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso)?

Lewis will, rightly, feel vindicated by the outcome of the cases he launched two years ago. All along, he knew his clients - Sven-Goran Eriksson, Shobna Gulati, Garry Flitcroft, and Abbie Gibson - were genuine hacking victims. But they should never have needed to wait so long for justice.

It was obvious that Trinity Mirror had discovered its culpability by July this year when it revealed that it had made a £4m provision for deal with the hacking claims.

At the time, there were 17 civil claims. By today, the total number - including the 10 settled cases - had risen to 29. I understand that there may be between 40 to 50 claims in the pipeline. The drama is far from over and that £4m provision will surely need to be increased.

Trinity Mirror emerges from this business just as badly as Rupert Murdoch's former newspaper business, News International. It obtained stories by illegal means and then sought to distance itself from any connection to journalism's "dark arts".

As a corporate entity, it has behaved disgracefully.