In exactly the same time it has taken the tribunal to deal with a tiny portion of its work - hearing the evidence of Mr Joseph Murphy snr - the Dail's Public Accounts Committee managed to wrap up its entire investigation into non-resident accounts.
It is a measure of the snail's-pace progress of this tribunal that Mr Murphy's evidence took four weeks to process, instead of the one week anticipated. Even the laborious process of reading his testimony in public has occupied a week, rather than the two days originally allocated.
As a result, the tribunal has fallen even further behind schedule and is unlikely to complete its investigations into the Gogarty allegations until Christmas. The bills for the extraordinary excursion to Guernsey are likely to run into tens and maybe even hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Normal service resumes this morning with the reappearance in the witness-box in Dublin Castle of Mr George Redmond. The former assistant Dublin city and county manager has given his direct evidence on the allegations made against him by Mr James Gogarty, but he still has to be cross-examined.
Twenty-seven other witnesses, many of them minor, are then listed to appear. Interest will focus on Mr Joseph Murphy jnr, son of Mr Murphy snr, who Mr Gogarty alleged was present at the meeting at which Mr Ray Burke was paid at least £30,000. Mr Murphy jnr will deny this allegation, and other employees in the Murphy companies are expected to deny involvement in wrongdoing when they follow him to the stand.
As for the evidence of Mr Murphy snr, heard in private near his home in Guernsey and then read out to a near-empty tribunal hall over the past week in Dublin, little new emerged.
The 82-year-old witness issued the expected denials in forthright terms, describing Mr Gogarty's allegations as "a pack of lies". He never knew Mr Burke or Mr Redmond, never paid a bribe, never even made a political contribution. He knew nothing about the payment to Mr Burke from company funds in 1989.
Everything hinges on the extent of Mr Murphy's involvement with his Irish companies during this period (he was 72 and already living in tax exile in the Channel Islands). However, his evidence on this point was inconclusive.
There is no documentary evidence to show that he was involved in the disposal of the north Dublin lands and the payment to Mr Burke. There is nothing to prove that he knew the buyer, Mr Michael Bailey. Equally, there is no paper evidence to support his contention that Mr Gogarty was "haunting" him for 18 months to sell the lands.
The Guernsey sessions were billed as something of a showdown between Mr Murphy and Mr Gogarty. However, it turned out differently, as Mr Murphy and his lawyers concentrated their fire on Mr Liam Conroy, the former chief executive of his companies.
Mr Conroy made detailed and serious allegations of tax evasion, breaches of currency controls and domiciliary laws against Mr Murphy in a serious of affidavits filed after he was ousted from his post.
His allegations chimed with those of Mr Gogarty, and gave sustenance to the latter's claim that Mr Murphy was panicked into selling his Irish lands because of the possibility that the Revenue Commissioners might pursue him on foot of the Conroy allegations.
However, Mr Murphy repeatedly attacked the credibility of Mr Conroy, now deceased, and his lawyer, Mr Garrett Cooney SC, completed the job in evidence read out yesterday. Mr Conroy was a "fantasist" who invented qualifications and talents for himself at the drop of a hat. He claimed he went to Cambridge when he had not, claimed he was qualified as an architect, when he was not, Mr Murphy said.
Mr Conroy also claimed he had an airline pilot's licence and had flown the world. He had a passion for motor-racing and claimed to have shared a flat with the former world champion, Gilles Villeneuve. These were also untrue.
As Mr Cooney pointed out, even the first line of his affidavit, in which Mr Conroy said he was the managing partner in a firm of architects from 1963, was "demonstrably false". In fact, Mr Conroy then worked for the sugar company in Tuam.
Far more serious for his credibility were the allegations made by the son of Mr Conroy's partner in the architectural firm, Conroy Manahan. When Mr Tony Manahan investigated the business affairs of his elderly father, Jack, in 1993, he discovered Mr Conroy had been steadily stripping the firm of its assets.
Substantial bills for the Shelbourne Hotel, Visa, club memberships, musical equipment and a set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica were all paid from business funds, while Mr Conroy drew a monthly salary significantly larger than that of his partner.
The result, according to Mr Tony Manahan, was that Mr Conroy drew £135,000 from the business over four years, while Mr Jack Manahan, who founded the business and did most of the work, drew only £42,000.
When business slumped, Mr Jack Manahan was left with serious debts and had to sell the family home. At the time his son wrote seeking compensation from Mr Conroy, he was living on social welfare and the bank was chasing him to clear an outstanding overdraft.
By then, however, Mr Conroy had moved on to the Murphy group, where his impact is felt to this day.