The great and the good will appear before the Dail Select Committee of Public Accounts as it strives to get to the bottom of the Deposit Interest Retention Tax fiasco. The list of those appearing before the six-strong sub-committee investigating the affair is so comprehensive that non-inclusion could almost be read as a social stigma within the financial services community.

Three taoisigh, past and present, and two other former finance ministers will be joined by the leading lights of the Department of Finance, the Revenue Commissioners, the Central Bank, most of our leading banks and their auditors in an intense exercise to get at the truth.

Whatever about the committee's likely success in that ambition, I would think any enterprising bookmaker would give very good odds on the likelihood of the exercise being completed in the less than five weeks allotted. If Jim Mitchell manages this, he will find himself in the chair for any future tribunal . . . a case of "even if you win, you lose".