Full transparency is needed on costs and payments in the RHI inquiry and all other public probes

This newspaper was an early advocate of an independent inquiry that had the authority to compel witnesses.

Such an inquiry was set up, under Sir Patrick Coghlin, and it issued its report six months ago, days before lockdown.

In this paper, we provided our own scrutiny of the affair with detailed reports on RHI, day after day, for years.

A major inquiry was always going to cost millions of pounds, but such probes should help to reduce the likelihood of bad public expenditure in future.

However, it is elementary that any investigation that has as its principal subject the abuse of public funds must itself offer complete transparency as to its own costs.

We are now beginning to find out the financial implications of the three-year inquiry, which is that it cost at least £14 million. Among the things that we have learned are that the three barristers were paid £2 million between them.

It is essential that such information is put in the public domain, in the same way that legal aid fees to lawyers are now public. But we also need further breakdowns of how that sum was allocated. How much work does £2 million entail?

This is all the more important because inquiries are becoming a feature of public life in Northern Ireland. We are about to have one into Muckamore hospital and some legacy inquests that have become major inquiries with several QCs.

The structure in which QCs typically earn more than judges and inquiry chairs is one that prevails across the UK and in the Republic of Ireland. But that does not mean it is out of our orbit as a matter for consideration in Northern Ireland.

We need to know how much all major recipients of fees to inquiries have been paid, so that we can debate whether such a structure is sustainable if Northern Ireland is going to keep holding inquiries, particularly in a financial crisis.

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