It should come as no surprise that the first day of Mr Ray Burke's latest appearance in the witness box has left us no wiser than before.
After all, Mr Burke has already endured three previous bouts of evidence without giving much away to his interrogators among the tribunal lawyers. The former minister hasn't come through years of combative media interviews without learning a thing or two about fending off hostile questions.
No less than with other witnesses, the tribunal must know by now that the main way to get to the truth is to follow the "money trail" rather than dwelling too much on oral evidence.
In Mr Burke's case, the paper trail has uncovered massive offshore payments which neither he nor his benefactors, builders Brennan and McGowan, disclosed in previous evidence.
Since tribunal lawyers exposed Mr Burke's self-confessed "failure of recollection" about these payments earlier this year, he has had plenty of time to prepare his defence. But any expectation that he would eat humble pie was misplaced.
Instead, he plugged the gaping holes in his account with his usual mix of bluster and half-explanations. Once again, there were profuse declarations of his willingness to co-operate with the tribunal. Then there was the tactic of replying to questions that were never asked, and not replying to the questions which were posed. "Yes" and "No" were the words the witness found hardest to say.
The doughty Patricia Dillon SC, for the tribunal, traversed much of the same terrain covered previously by her departed colleague Pat Hanratty, without making any significant headway.
We already knew that Mr Burke had lied to the Dβil in 1997 about the contributions he received. We knew that his earlier evidence to the tribunal was full of errors. We know that Mr Burke cannot give any credible explanation of why he used an abnormal form of his name and a false address to open offshore accounts.
Mr Burke's explanation for all the payments he received - the £125,000 he got from Brennan and McGowan, the £30,000 from James Gogarty and the £35,000 he got from Oliver Barry - is to say that much of the money resides in a "political fund" to this day.
On dozens of occasions yesterday, he referred to the £118,000 in the fund, "which I cannot touch" until legal and accountancy advice is received.
This is only a "fund" because Mr Burke chooses to call it so. No one, not least in Fianna Fβil, had the slightest inkling it existed until 1998, when he told Bertie Ahern of its existence on the night of the by-election to fill his seat in Dublin North.
Mr Burke had an answer for everything yesterday. Ms Dillon said his previous evidence on the Brennan and McGowan payments was "all wrong and it was all wrong in the same way as Joseph McGowan when he gave evidence," but the witness explained that his understanding had been "overtaken by events".
He claimed he based his earlier evidence on that of Mr McGowan, which would explain why he believed the money he received was the proceeds of fund-raising in the UK.
Such was his state of ignorance that it took him almost 20 years and the investigations of the tribunal to find out the exact source of the money coming in from his builder friends.
Mr Burke's failure to remember the offshore payments seems all the more surprising given Ms Dillon's assertion that he travelled to Jersey on three separate occasions to receive the payments.
His evidence continues on Tuesday.