Sam McBride: This report is restrained, but RHI has revealed ineffable incompetence

The greatest shock yesterday was not so much in the findings of Sir Patrick Coghlin’s report – although there will be those who are surprised by some of what he has said there – but in how he said it.

Sir Patrick, who had a reputation as a no-nonsense judge, had often been a swashbuckling chairman of the inquiry during its hearings.

During the 111 days of evidence sessions he was often an open book – as were his deputy, Dame Una O’Brien, the inquiry’s technical assessor, Dr Keith MacLean.

Each of them were visibly and audibly incredulous as they listened to some of the evidence.

But yesterday’s report is very different. It is a document of restraint, of careful language, of moderation and limited reproach — even in some of the areas where the inquiry panel sounded aghast as they listened to what they were being told.

But in some ways our lack of shock at what is in the inquiry report is because of the transparency of Sir Patrick and his team throughout this process.

Every second of oral evidence was heard in public and tens of thousands of pages of written evidence were published on the inquiry website.

Had that not been the case, and had this been the in-house ‘independent investigation’ which the DUP and Sinn Féin initially wanted, yesterday’s report would have been an extraordinary document, setting out a wildly dysfunctional Stormont system where rules and even laws were broken either in spirit or letter as a matter of course by some of the most powerful people in Northern Ireland.

Because much of that evidence has already been aired, the findings that such behaviour is unacceptable and must stop now appear muted and obvious.

But reading through the recommendations of the inquiry reveal it to be – even if the language is restrained – a devastating assessment of devolved government since 2007.

What does it say about the state of Stormont that it takes a £14 million public inquiry to tell ministers to read legislation when they recommend that the legislature pass it into law, to tell civil servants to take minutes of meetings, to tell powerful ministerial advisers that they should declare conflicts of interest and to tell the two biggest parties that they should obey the law?

In time, this inquiry is likely to be remembered more for its evidence hearings than for its conclusions.

In many cases – such as Arlene Foster’s admission that she did not read the RHI legislation – the conclusion was obvious and it was the evidence itself which was shocking.

At 276,392 words, the inquiry report is enormous and at the time of writing I have not finished reading it.

However, based on the key recommendations, the summary of the report and searching key parts of the report itself, limited emphasis has been given to what seems to have been the ideology underpinning the actions of at least some of those involved in RHI – that the scheme running wildly over budget was not necessarily a mistake, but could in fact be a policy goal because they believed it was being funded by London.

That culture, which one senior civil servant referred to as “what you might say was free money”, led Arlene Foster’s special adviser Andrew Crawford to say in an email to a fellow spad at the point RHI was running out of control: “I am a little confused over what the problem is for the non-domestic scheme.

“The scheme is being funded from [London] and therefore if we go over our 4% target all that will happen is that we will get more than our fair share of the UK pot. I would have thought that this is toNIs [sic] advantage...”

The inquiry report referred to “evidence suggesting that there was a view held by some in the administration in Northern Ireland that the more AME [Treasury] money that came in the better”.

With the restraint which typifies the report, it went on to say: “While in principle there is nothing wrong with a desire to have as much money available for the devolved administration as possible, it must be remembered that all taypayers’ money has the same value.”

Overall, the inquiry’s verdict has been as good for Arlene Foster – and for Sinn Fein – as either of them could have hoped for.

Although Mrs Foster has lost the confidence of a swathe of her party in large part because of what RHI has exposed about her, the DUP leader’s internal critics do not have in this document the ferocious criticism of her which some of them believed would enable them to move against her.

For that reason – and also because the coronavirus pandemic in itself is an argument against sudden upheaval at the top of Stormont at this stage – her position now looks more immediately secure than it has been at any point since the party’s 2017 general election success propelled it to the heart of Westminster.

For now, the most immediate impact of the inquiry will be on civil servants. They have borne the heaviest criticism, and yesterday one former senior civil servant was privately scathing about how mandarins have been blamed.

However, in large part that has happened because by not recording key decisions or minuting meetings – often to please their political masters, it seems – officials were often left without a scrap of paper, let alone the bulky files Sir Humphrey Appleby would have stashed away, with which to defend themselves.

There will be pressure now for individual civil servants to be disciplined – not only because of the criticism of them in the report but because to date not a single person has been disciplined as a result of RHI.

But there is already a cultural change within the civil service as a result of what they have observed in this scandal. Speaking of the new Executive, one civil servant said privately “everything gets written down”.

Officials know that not only is it important for reasons of transparency and accountability to record important information, but in order to protect themselves they need a record.

Over-zealous recording of every minor detail can itself become a problem, but it is less of a problem than the culture of oral government which pervaded past Executives.

More than four decades ago, one of the most distinguished civil servants from Northern Ireland’s first half century, John Oliver, wrote with pride about the Northern Ireland Civil Service: “Ulster is no administrative backwater; it is a well-run country with something to teach the rest of the world.”

In his book Working at Stormont, Oliver – who played a key role in setting up the NHS in Northern Ireland – wrote effusively of “the qualities of hard work, courage and persistence which abound in the service” and how the civil service which he entered in 1937 was “small, dignified, efficient”.

That is not being said now.

It is dangerous to romanticise the past and there were always problems in the Northern Ireland Civil Service, something which with time became more apparent.

But the ineffable incompetence which this inquiry has exposed – to the point that the same civil servant was simultaneously both desperately attempting to rein in RHI and advertising the scheme – have done damage to the credibility of the civil service which will take both contrition and radical reforms to undo.