On and on it goes. Last week the Moriarty tribunal issued "provisional findings" about the award of the state's second mobile-phone licence to the businessman Denis O'Brien in 1996. This was the long-running inquiry's second set of "provisional findings" - another batch was sent out in late 2008, and hotly disputed by Mr O'Brien, by former minister Michael Lowry and by civil servants in the Department of Communications.
No doubt they will find similar fault with Justice Moriarty's latest "provisional" conclusions. They have been given until early February to respond and then, we are led to believe, we might get the final report of this interminable inquiry by the end of next month.
Of course, we almost certainly won't. Every putative deadline has been broken by a tribunal that makes the legal case at the centre of Charles Dickens' Bleak House look like a bail hearing. When the government asked Judge Moriarty in 2004 when he expected to conclude his deliberations, it was told not later than January 11, 2006. When Brian Cowen, the taoiseach, announced last year that the final report would be published this month, he was immediately contradicted by "sources close to the tribunal".
The inquiry is now an affront to the Irish taxpayer. Its senior counsel earn an average of more than 800,000 a year and are approaching 10m each in total fees. This newspaper has already revealed the astronomical sums spent by the tribunal team on gourmet sandwiches, Belgian chocolates, pens and taxis.
There is no need for Justice Moriarty to circulate yet more "provisional findings". Neither the chairman of the Mahon (planning) inquiry nor the admirably run Morris tribunal into garda corruption in Donegal saw fit to do anything other than go straight to the final report. The conclusions of a tribunal have no legal standing. They are merely the informed view of an expert who has studied submissions and listened attentively to oral evidence. A tribunal report commands a certain respect because it is written by a High Court judge, but it has nothing more than moral authority.
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The Moriarty tribunal farrago must end soon. If it doesn't, the Oireachtas has to step in and halt it. The events it has investigated happened 15 years ago. Their relevance to a financially strapped country decrease each day.