The official inquiry into the sale of SiteServ has been granted yet another extension.

The deadline for the Cregan Commission into the sale, and other transactions at IBRC, has now been moved to the end of October.

The announcement by the Taoiseach Enda Kenny comes as he publishes the Commission's third interim report - outlining the limited work done in the last three months.

Because of legal difficulties in allowing IBRC's liquidators to waive professional and legal privilege, the inquiry has been unable to admit many documents as evidence.

It is still also compiling a list of documents for which it is asking SiteServ's eventual buyer, Denis O'Brien's Millington firm, to waive its own privilege.

Millington, as the buyer of most of SiteServ's assets and subsidiaries, retains privilege over related documents and its compliance is required in order to use them as evidence.

New laws to salvage inquiry also published

Legislation to overcome this problem and to give the Commission the power of compellibility has also separately been published today by the Tánaiste and justice minister, Frances Fitzgerald.

The laws can be used to force the liquidators of IBRC, and Millington, to waive their legal privilege over certain documents.

They also allow the Commission to sit in divisions if additional judges are appointed to sit alongside Justice Brian Cregan.

Justice Cregan has previously outlined a personal conflict of interest in some transactions to be examined at a later point, necessitating that other judges also be appointed.

The inquiry is examining 38 transactions which involved IBRC - the combined former Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide Building Societies - writing off debts of more than €10 million.

The sale of SiteServ involved debts of around €105 million being written off, making it one of the six largest transactions involving the state-owned bank.