The end of the first week!

That’s the end of the first week. The Inquiry isn’t sitting on Fridays.

Today we heard from Mr Joe Bugeja whose company has been selected as preferred operator of the proposed container terminal.  He operates container terminals in Riga (in Latvia) and in Venice. He told us about all the things that are needed for a container terminal to run efficiently.

In the afternoon, we heard about Rail Access from Graham MacDonald. He told the Inquiry about the state of the existing railway line into the Dockyard, and how much work would need to be done to bring it back into use.

There ensued considerable discussion about availability of witnesses during the next two weeks, and how the programme might be ordered. The Reporters will put out a revised programme for next week by the end of tomorrow. Several people have been asking about the timetable for next week, so we’ll update the What’s On page on this website as soon as we know the details. As with this week, we’ll update the calendar with any changes from day to day.

Proceedings today were finished in good time, so we were allowed home a bit early today. However, part of being allowed home for the weekend was the business of clearing the room of all our stuff.  Those of you who have attended this week will have seen the volume of documents. All of these have to be removed each weekend and set up again on the Monday. We had to load all our boxes documents into our cars before we left.

We start back at 10 am on Monday. Well, probably a good bit earlier as we’ll be setting up the files again. We'll keep you up to date next week!