A government spokesman said the tribunal had contacted the government on Friday "with a view to discussing the work of the tribunal in the immediate term". The spokesman added that those discussions would happen "very soon but, until they take place, it is not possible to comment on them".

The tribunal was originally due to have completed its work by last summer, but was granted a six-month extension by the government to this January.

However, while it did publish a report in December on the Haughey module, it has yet to complete its report on former communications minister Michael Lowry. With the possibility of two more public sessions, it is now thought unlikely that the final report will be published before the autumn - the tribunal's 10th anniversary. The Moriarty tribunal has so far cost in the region of Euro25m and the government has allocated it a further Euro10m for 2007.

This latest request from the tribunal for a meeting with the government comes almost three years after then finance minister Charlie McCreevy proposed a sharp cut in fees for senior counsel at tribunals from a daily rate of Euro2,500 to Euro900.

Because of government fears that barristers working on existing inquiries would quit rather than accept the change, the government deferred the date for the introduction of the new fee schedule to November 2005.

However, this deadline and a further one last July have come and gone without the introduction of the new lower fee structure for existing inquiries, with the exception of the now-completed Barr tribunal.