The Eames-Bradley Consultative Group on the Past could finally recommend to the British government that nothing can be done at this stage to come to terms with the legacy of the Troubles.
Addressing the last in a series of public meetings, the group's co-chairman Denis Bradley said they could reluctantly conclude that the community is not yet ready to move on. "That is as big a possibility at this point than any other," he said.
"There have been many versions of truth told to us, some of them parallel, some of them utterly contradictory. I'm not sure it's our job to rule on the truth.
"But I think we might be able to find some truth common to us all."
Mr Bradley told the public meeting in Omagh, Co Tyrone that it was possible that the issue of the Troubles legacy was being addressed "too soon".
"We are consulting anyway. When you tackle it now you engage the people with greatest hurt."
As with previous public meetings there were impassioned pleas from the floor from relatives of those killed not to recommend a general amnesty.
The husband of one of the Omagh bomb victims left the room when told by Mr Bradley that the group's remit covered the Troubles up to the Belfast Agreement and did not therefore include the Omagh bombing.
Laurence Rush, who lost his wife in the atrocity, said: "I am not going to allow that you give [ the bombers] absolution for what they did."
The most important issue, he added, was not about alleged political interference, but about the need for a truth and reconciliation process which involved everyone. "Let's get down to ordinary people talking," he said. "Stop being apologists for those who appointed you," he said.
Ross Hussey, an Ulster Unionist, said killings did not end with the Belfast Agreement and that the group's remit was therefore flawed.
Many speakers argued passionately that the Troubles did not amount to a war and that demands for such were effectively an attempt to rewrite history.
One relative simply said: "All the victims want is justice. And justice means courts and jail."
Another said that the panel members were not best qualified to address the past as they had not been required "to pick up pieces of their relatives and put them into a plastic bag".
Another person said all "political appointees", such as those in the Eames-Bradley group, were in some way tainted by those who appointed them.
Jean Caldwell, relative of a victim of the Teebane massacre, asked, to applause from the floor, why there were no victims of the Troubles on the Eames-Bradley panel.
Declan McAleer, a Sinn Féin councillor, said the victims were all equal and there was no difference between unionist or nationalist tears over the loss of a family member.