RHI Inquiry cost put at £14 million, but real bill to taxpayers is far higher

On Monday, the three-year inquiry posted a list of its direct costs on its website, saying that the final bill was £7.362 million.

However, a larger sum was spent on costs not directly billed to Sir Patrick Coghlin’s inquiry – but still borne by taxpayers.

Figures released by Stormont’s Department of Finance and other parts of the public sector last year showed that by the end of the inquiry’s hearings, four Stormont departments and other public bodies had spent £5.6 million on legal representation or other costs.

The money mostly went to lawyers representing witnesses who were linked to departments – from high profile former ministers such as Arlene Foster and Jonathan Bell to junior civil servants.

By May 2019, Ofgem had spent £2.2 million on the inquiry, made up of legal fees, travel, staﬀ to search through 1.5 million documents and examining material disclosed to it by the inquiry.

When those figures are added to the direct costs of the inquiry, the bill comes to more than £15.2 million.

However, yesterday the Department of Finance published new figures for what Stormont departments had spent on legal fees. Curiously, the new figures are far lower than those said to have been spent a year ago, with a missing £1.2 million.

When the News Letter queried the discrepancy, the department said that the new figures were accurate and last year’s figures “included some calculation of potential spend” – even though that was not said at the time.

The cost of the inquiry to Stormont is much higher than the headline figures because the Department of Finance said it had made no record – or even estimate – of the cost of the vast amounts of time required by huge numbers of serving civil servants to respond to inquiry questions over several years.

The inquiry report concluded that there had been no corruption in how RHI was handled, but the inquiry’s investigative process unearthed a slew of extraordinary revelations about how the DUP, SInn Féin and civil servants really operated behind the scenes.

The inquiry said that its panel – Sir Patrick Coghlin and Dame Una O’Brien, as well as technical assessor Keith MacLean – were paid a total of £1.374 million.

Counsel to the inquiry – David Scoffield QC, Joseph Aiken and Donal Lunny – were paid £2.06 million between them.

The entirety of the rest of the inquiry staff – solicitor Patrick Butler, the legal support team, the secretariat staff, and other staff – received little more than the three lawyers, being paid £2.345 million between them.

Among the other costs was £819,000 for the inquiry offices and £495,000 for IT.

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