The awesome beast that is the Flood tribunal reaches its second birthday today, which also marks its 100th day of public sittings.
So far, the tribunal has cost the taxpayer £4,559,319.98, according to the Department of the Environment. However, the real price will be far higher than this, when the chairman gets around to awarding costs to dozens of witnesses who are represented before the tribunal.
More importantly, there is no end in sight. Like the beef tribunal, a seemingly straightforward inquiry has turned into a near-permanent examination of a vast array of matters both relevant and abstruse.
Two years on, there still hasn't been an opening statement. The north Dublin lands at the centre of the investigation still haven't been examined in detail; we don't even know how many acres are involved, for example.
In addition, the tribunal has yet to say a single word about its investigations into Mr Padraig Flynn, Mr Owen O'Callaghan, Mr Frank Dunlop, Mr Liam Lawlor and many others who are the subject of allegations.
The race is on now to complete the evidence relating to the Gogarty allegations by Christmas but with at least 26 witnesses still to be called in this strand of investigations, even this target looks ambitious.
The passage of time is taking its toll. One key witness died before giving evidence. One of the tribunal lawyers has gone back to the Law Library, and Mr Ray Burke, having parted company with his first legal team, has now lost his senior counsel, Mr Joe Finnegan, who has been appointed to the High Court. Now firmly into his seventies, Mr Justice Flood must be wondering if he will ever see retirement.
Yesterday's evidence threw up yet more contradictions between the accounts given by different witnesses. The former Murphy group director, Mr Gabriel Grehan, told why he rang Ms Mary Harney in mid-1997 to tell her about the payment to Mr Burke, but his story differed considerably from the evidence given by the Tanaiste.
Ms Harney gave evidence in May that Mr Grehan told her that Joseph Murphy Structural Engineering had paid £30,000 to Mr Burke. This had been matched by £30,000 from the developer Mr Michael Bailey, and the money was paid for planning favours.
Yesterday, Mr Grehan insisted he rang the Tanaiste to "reassure" her that the company had paid the money but it was not given for a planning matter. "I wanted to reassure the Tanaiste that there was nothing to substantiate these rumours," said Mr Grehan, whose wife Dr Mary Grehan was a PD candidate.
So, whereas Ms Harney and the PD general secretary, Mr Garvan McGinley, understood they were getting "important information" from a key source in the company, Mr Grehan says he was just giving "reassurance" and his knowledge was based on "rumour and hearsay".
Mr Grehan also landed Mr Joseph Murphy jnr firmly in the soup by alleging Mr Murphy knew about the payment of £30,000 to Mr Burke in mid-1997, before telling Mr Dermot Ahern of Fianna Fail that JMSE had paid no money to Mr Burke.
He related a speakerphone conversation he and the managing director, Mr Frank Reynolds, had with Mr Murphy, who was in London. Mr Murphy gave the two men a "specific assurance" that the payment was not for planning purposes. Asked if Mr Murphy said what the money was for, the witness replied: "No, and I didn't ask him".
Mr Murphy said he would deal with the matter from then on, which is how he ended up meeting the Taoiseach's emissary, Mr Dermot Ahern. This seems a strange decision, given that Mr Grehan and Mr Reynolds were both experienced businessmen who were in charge of the day-to-day running of the company in Dublin. Mr Murphy, the acting chairman, was a commercial novice still in his 30s. He lived in London and was unlikely to have any detailed knowledge of the Irish political scene.
Mr Grehan left JMSE in November 1997, just as the Flood tribunal was being set up. Yesterday, he said he left to take a break and to pursue business interests. However, Mr McGinley recalls him saying in January 1998 that he left because he felt there was more bad news "coming down the tracks" and he wanted to disassociate himself from that.
Mr Grehan denied giving this as a reason for leaving JMSE. According to Murphys, he got a substantial severance payment in 1997 and two further payments in 1998 and 1999. The last payment was made a month after his first appearance in the witness-box in May.