The tribunal was abruptly adjourned yesterday after it was told of a last-minute rush of applications by police witnesses for screening while they give their evidence.
This development could raise substantial new procedural and legal problems for the inquiry, and has already forced it to set about rescheduling the evidence of some 18 serving and former RUC officers who were to have taken the witness stand this week and next.
After completing the evidence of the first screened police witness, Mr William George Hunter, the tribunal rose for lunch, but when it returned the chairman, Lord Saville, announced that the next witness, Mr Samuel Ballantyne, "just decided he wants to make an application for screening".
It also appears that a number of others will be making late applications for screening, and Lord Saville asked Mr Nicholas Hanna QC, for five serving or former officers, and Mr Stephen Ritchie, for the Northern Ireland Police Service, to try to discover how many applications there would be.
He said that all applications for screening should be presented on Thursday morning. Lord Saville added: "We simply cannot afford to waste time with people turning up with applications at the last moment and thereby causing us to lose days of witness time."
The prospect of a rush of applications for screening at this stage is all the more unexpected because it is now some 18 months since three former Special Branch officers applied for and were granted screening by the tribunal.
The inquiry adjourned until Thursday morning.