Sam McBride: This is the day of judgment, but it is not the end of the RHI scandal

Despite a distinguished career at the bar and then on the bench, where he rose to the Court of Appeal, it is this inquiry for which Sir Patrick will be remembered.

Even before the verdict, this inquiry has struck at the heart of what passes for the establishment in 21st century Northern Ireland.

Evidence sessions have embarrassed the first minister from the DUP, the finance minister from Sinn Fein who appointed Sir Patrick, Northern Ireland’s biggest private sector company, the industrial poultry behemoth Moy Park, and myriad mandarins in the Northern Ireland Civil Service.

The inquiry has pulled back the facade of Stormont, exposing how ministers – while nominally in control of, and responsible for, their departments – were in some cases less powerful than those who on paper were described as their subordinates, special advisers (spads).

But one element of this inquiry means that whatever the outcome today, part of this story will remain untold.

As Sir Patrick’s team of lawyers began their work in spring 2017, they submitted a written request – backed up by the sweeping powers of the Inquiries Act 2005 – to Stormont’s Department for the Economy (DfE), which set up and runs RHI, compelling it to hand over all material about the scheme.

Other public bodies such as Stormont’s Department of Finance and Department of Agriculture received similar requests.

But where the lawyers would have expected to have found detailed records of what happened when, they quickly came upon critical gaps in the record. Minutes of meetings simply did not exist; the person who took multi-million pound decisions was not recorded; the basic records which they would expect to find in a golf club or a church committee were repeatedly absent from the heart of Northern Ireland’s government.

This wasn’t like Watergate where records were altered or destroyed after the event. The records had simply never existed.

By contrast, Ofgem, the GB energy regulator which was paid by Stormont to administer the scheme, handed over a vast volume of material.

But then things became more complicated when it became clear that some records had been created – but had never been under the control of civil servants.

Multiple DUP and Sinn Fein ministers and spads were using private email accounts – and in some cases, private phones and other forms of communication – to transact government business.

But that material was never under the control of departments, meaning that it was entirely up to those individuals as to whether they retained those records.

When asked to explain why he had not handed over messages where others party to the messages had disclosed them, Timothy Johnston, the power behind the thrones of every DUP first minister, told the inquiry that “my phone automatically deleted messages after 30 days”.

Therefore the inquiry has had to sift through the copious records which do exist and piece that together with the oral testimony which it extracted from witnesses and scraps of records – everything from WhatsApp messages to tape recordings and hand-written notes – which it has compelled from individuals.

The absence of even many basic records, and the admission by the head of the civil service, David Sterling, that civil servants often deliberately did not record information in an attempt to please their political masters, has been devastating for the reputation of the Northern Ireland Civil Service.

More than a century ago, George Wyndham, then the key British ruler in pre-partition Ireland as chief secretary for Ireland, expressed amazement at how government on the island appeared to be “conducted only by continuous conversation”.

For all the Northern Ireland Civil Service’s large human resources departments, armies of spin doctors and bulky ‘people strategies’, the RHI scandal has exposed a widespread absence of the most elementary disciplines of public administration.

Nevertheless, as humiliating as the RHI Inquiry has been for the civil service as an institution, there are within its ranks many capable people of integrity who believe in public service.

Their challenge now will be to speak truth to power in a way in which far too many of their colleagues have failed to do, to support each other if that courage causes individual civil servants to be targeted by their political masters, and to hold to account those of their number who have failed so disastrously to perform their duties.

For the politicians – particularly for Arlene Foster, who as first minister now has the most to lose – there will likely be a hope that as many people as possible will be criticised. Given the number of people who clearly failed in multiple areas, it is unsurprising that the inquiry has written 48 letters to those who will be criticised as part of a process to allow them to respond to that criticism.

If Mrs Foster is to face significant criticism –and within the DUP, the expectation is that she may escape with less censure than many of the public expect – then she may seek to argue that if everyone is to blame then no one is to blame; essentially the entire system of government failed and therefore it would be unfair to hold her to account personally for that.

But whether that argument is made by the DUP leader, civil servants or others, it contains a dangerous logic. Systems are not abstract concepts, but are made up of people and if those people failed, or acted inappropriately, then it is dangerous to suggest that those individuals are not held to account for their individual actions.

But beyond ineptitude, there is at the heart of this inquiry the far darker allegation that some powerful DUP figures deliberately kept the scheme open when it was out of control. That allegation was undermined by the weakness of the man who made it, Jonathan Bell, as a witness.

But the answer to the RHI riddle was never simply a choice between personal avarice or incompetence. The scandal exposed a grasping culture of entitlement at Stormont where some senior figures thought it was legitimate to milk the Treasury teat even when a perverse scheme such as cash for ash was running out of control. The exposure of that culture will leave a long legacy.

Like the boy who cried wolf, when in years to come Stormont goes to the Treasury with a genuine claim for increased funding – especially around a health service which in places is collapsing – its claims will be met with deep scepticism.