Does anyone really believe devolution in Northern Ireland can be restored by February? Will the IRA disband within the next three months? Or will David Trimble eat his words and hope that his party approves his diet. Will there be a sea-change in thinking in the unionist community?
With no sign of any one of those three eventualities, why do Bertie Ahern, Paul Murphy and Richard Haass all keep expressing optimism about the restoration to working order of the Belfast Agreement some time in the new year? Why, above all else, introduce at this moment the possibility - the desirability according to the Northern Secretary, Paul Murphy - of former IRA prisoners sitting on district policing boards and "playing a role in community policing"?
Is it because they simply cannot face the reality, increasingly apparent within Northern Ireland, that the agreement is broken, probably beyond repair? Or are they gambling all on the outside chance of the DUP riding to their rescue?
Round tables are, by definition, good things, but they may well be the last thing Northern Ireland needs at the moment. The dictionary definition of the term is a conference held in a friendly spirit among parties of equal power or standing. There is little or no friendly spirit among the parties at this round table; it was the total breakdown of trust that caused the suspension of the institutions.
Nor are those at the table equal. Two parties, despite their protestations of commitment to a peace process, are undeniably linked to terrorist organisations in possession of illegal arms and engaged in terrorist activities.
To many in Northern Ireland, Trimble's refusal to continue to sit in the Executive with Sinn Féin clarified the problem and cut through the fog of ambiguity within which the Belfast Agreement had been created and implemented.
To go back now into round-table talks with parties linked to paramilitarism is to re-enter that misty murky world which Tony Blair seemed to have renounced in his unambiguous Harbour Office speech. Republicans, he said, must make a real, total and permanent commitment to exclusively peaceful means. Symbolic gestures would not do, inch by inch negotiations would not work.
At that point it seemed he was demanding the disbandment and disarming of the IRA, or failing that renunciation by Sinn Féin of the IRA and all armed struggle, and its full support for the police and army in rooting out paramilitary activity, nationalist or loyalist. At last, it appeared, he was confirming a new "given", a new fixed point which all must take into account, that there can be no progress until the IRA issue has been resolved.
For years many have argued that the IRA is a given in the Northern debate, a fixed point around which others must manoeuvre. The IRA, they asserted, and some still do, would never disband, nor would it give up its weapons; therefore, whatever the moral rights and wrongs, it was foolish, mischievous or even deliberately obstructive to demand that it should.
Now this newly affirmed given of no place in government for parties linked to terrorism makes it foolish or mischievous to demand that unionists go back into the Executive with Sinn Féin while the IRA remains in existence. Not just because the moral grounds for such a demand are non-existent, but because opinion within the UUP and the broader unionist community makes it impossible. To pursue such a course is to put in mortal danger the future of the agreement.
Entry into round-table talks with these parties, on the basis of supposed mutual trust and common purpose, seems to many like a re-entry into the tortuous path that led Trimble into sharing office with Sinn Féin in the first place. Such a mistake might be forgivable once, but not twice.
Add to this the remarkable spectacle of the Irish Foreign Minister being joint chairman. The Republic's legitimate interest in Northern Ireland has long been acknowledged, and a Dublin presence broadly acceptable. But as joint chairman with no democratic mandate or standing within the United Kingdom, with status equal to that of the British Minister constitutionally responsible for Northern Ireland?
What sort of message does that send out to a unionist community being warned by opponents of Trimble that the agreement gives Dublin de facto joint authority over Northern Ireland. Brian Cowen's presence at Stormont must be an invaluable electoral asset to the anti-agreement forces.
Blair has already retreated from his Harbour Office clarity. The round-table talks signal the renewed search for a fudge. The thinking revealed in the new policing legislation presented at Westminster, and in Paul Murphy's preposterous article in this newspaper on Tuesday, seems to be that all that is needed is a few more concessions to the IRA, and an obliging somersault from David Trimble.
Mr Murphy stops short of demanding the disbandment of the IRA; instead he talks of the need for it not to be active, which sounds very much like a ceasefire. He calls on the IRA to "take the final steps" on the path from violence to democracy, as if it was almost there and a positive statement or a significant gesture is all that is needed.
Despite Mr Murphy's confident assertion, there is no logic in former prisoners being allowed on to policing boards. Certainly not if they have been convicted of terrorist acts against the state, and have shown no readiness to accept that such violence was not and is not justified.
It is hard to see any real hope for progress until the IRA is out of business, formally disbanded and totally disarmed, or until Sinn Féin has done a de Valera and broken completely with physical force.
Dennis Kennedy is a historian and political commentator