DUP and SF secrecy a key reason for RHI Inquiry’s £14m cost to taxpayers

The inquiry’s final cost will not be revealed for some time.

Although the inquiry has published its report, it has not yet completed its work and will not be wound up for some time.

When that figure does come, it is likely to be more than £7 million. But that is only part of the story.

An even larger sum has been spent from public funds as a direct result of the inquiry.

Departments had teams of civil servants who were overwhelmingly – or in some periods, exclusively – working on preparing material to go to the inquiry.

And throughout the inquiry hearing there were rows of lawyers sitting behind the inquiry staff and witnesses in the old Senate Chamber in Parliament Buildings, most of whom are being paid from the public purse.

When those costs are included, the total bill for the inquiry will be more than £14 million.

But while a public inquiry, being a quasi-judicial process, inevitably involves considerable expense, there was a particular reason why this inquiry cost as much as it did.

Many of those from the DUP and Sinn Féin operated in ways which made the basic task of assembling their governmental communications far harder than should have been the case. Although the inquiry amassed 1.3 million pages of evidence, that required 815 separate notices issued under Section 21 of the Inquiries Act 2005 compelling witnesses to answer questions, hand over documentation or give the inquiry other physical evidence such as audio recordings.

Whereas a government department ought to centrally hold all relevant material, allowing the inquiry to seize then begin analysing it, Sir Patrick’s team had to guess where information was held and then try to uncover it.

As well as leaving them unaccountable, open to hacking from outsiders and subject to internal confusion about what was happening, the DUP and Sinn Fein’s secretive methods of communication have added to the bill for taxpayers in uncovering what went on in this scandal.