Key meetings of Assembly committees scheduled for today and tomorrow should indicate what chances remain of agreement among the parties on policing and the restoration of Stormont.
The Programme for Government Committee meets at Parliament Buildings this morning to consider anti-poverty measures and victims' needs.
At the same time the Assembly meets in plenary session to debate water charges and provision of mental health services.
However, both are overshadowed by exchanges between the parties over the devolution of policing and justice powers. That issue, which is central to the return of powers next March under the British and Irish governments' timetable, will be further discussed tomorrow at a second meeting of a sub-committee of Assembly members.
Sinn Féin, the DUP, the SDLP and the Ulster Unionists remain divided on the manner of justice devolution.
Divisions were made clearer at the weekend by remarks from Sinn Féin's Gerry Kelly. He explicitly ruled out a DUP proposal at a meeting of the same committee last Thursday which called for any future justice minister to be elected by a weighted cross-community vote. This would mean that probably neither the DUP nor Sinn Féin nominations to such a post would succeed in the Assembly.
Mr Kelly told Radio Ulster's Inside Politics programme he "will not collude" in his own party's exclusion from office.
Mr Kelly said he was open to any model on devolution of policing as long as it was linked to a timeframe and he accused the DUP of opposing the transfer of powers as an issue to block power-sharing with republicans.
He accused the DUP of "not producing anything that shows a way out" of difficulties over policing.
The SDLP leader Mark Durkan, meanwhile, revealed he has written to British prime minister Tony Blair protesting at plans to hand primacy for intelligence handling from the police to British military intelligence.
"At the moment, because the PSNI handles national security matters, the Police Ombudsman can investigate complaints about these matters. But when MI5 assumes primacy, she will not be able to do so," he wrote.
The plan has been rejected also by republicans.
The SDLP has also rejected a DUP proposal for any new justice minister to lose the power to vote at executive meetings.
Alban Maginness accused the DUP of "slapping down on the table" a new proposal that would require legislation.
"It would see a justice minister at the Executive who would have no vote and who would be a second-class minister in what is meant to be an Executive of equals. Bizarrely, the justice minister would not even be able to vote for his/her own proposals to the Executive."
Tomorrow's meeting on policing is expected to be the last before Christmas. Its members are due to report back to the Programme for Government Committee on January 3rd.
Today will also witness the first meeting of a Bill of Rights Forum in Belfast designed to assist the conclusion of proposals for such a Bill.