Top republicans gave identical written answers to RHI Inquiry – but won’t say if they conferred

New material published by the inquiry – which reported in March – includes witness statements from Ted Howell and Martin Lynch.

The answers from the two men – the former of whom was trusted by the IRA as a go-between in the 1990s and the latter of whom was Gerry Adams’ driver and described by Panorama’s John Ware as one of the IRA’s “most senior representatives” in 2003 when he had a key role in

handling the Scappaticci informer affair for the IRA – were word-for-word identical.

The only discernible difference between the two statements was that Mr Howell used a slightly larger font size and Mr Howell’s was signed three days before that of his colleague.

The questions had been sent to Sinn Fein’s Connolly House headquarters in west Belfast but were addressed to each man personally.

Last night Sinn Fein would not explain why their supposedly independent responses demonstrated such extraordinary similarities to each other, nor whether they had consulted with each other about what their evidence would be.

The inquiry told most witnesses that they should not confer when responding to its questions and that the material given to them was to be treated in confidence. However, for some reason that warning was not included in the inquiry’s letter to the two men.

For instance, in the written questions sent to former DUP minister Jonathan Bell he was told: “It is vital that the witness statement you provide to the inquiry is your own evidence, absent the influence of others ...”

He was also told – as were many other witnesses – that “you may share the correspondence and the enclosed notice with your legal representative(s), but neither you nor they may show, communicate the contents of, nor provide this correspondence or the notice to any other person or organisation without the express permission of the RHI Inquiry. Any breach of this duty of confidentiality is actionable at the suit of the inquiry chairman”.

Mr Bell, again in common with many witnesses, did not receive an offer to meet the solicitor to the inquiry, Patrick Butler.

However, in his letters to Mr Howell and Mr Lynch, Mr Butler said: “If it would assist you, I am happy to meet with you (or, if you have one, your legal representative) to discuss the requirements of the Section 21 Notice and what evidence you may be able to provide which is within the scope of the Section 21 Notice.”

By contrast to the identical evidence provided by Mr Howell and Mr Lynch, when Sinn Fein ‘super spad’ Aidan McAteer was asked some of the same questions, his answers were worded differently – as were those of the spad to then finance minister Máirtín Ó Muilleoir, Eoin Rooney.

The questions to all of the Sinn Fein figures had been around an Ofgem employee, Edd Fyffe, who had contacted Sinn Fein in January 2017 and presented himself as a whistleblower, setting out a series of allegations against Ofgem, which runs RHI for Stormont.

Each of the republicans said that they had handled his allegations appropriately and neither they nor Mr Fyffe were called to give oral evidence to the inquiry.

The News Letter asked whether Mr Howell or Mr Lynch discussed with each other how they would respond to the inquiry and, if not, how they could explain the remarkable similarity between their answers.

At the time of going to press, there had been no response, despite repeated requests for comment.

Mr Howell and Mr Lynch, along with veteran IRA man Padraic Wilson, had been the triumvirate of senior republicans to whom Mr Ó Muilleoir passed a series of complex policy decisions around RHI – even though none of them are energy experts, lawyers or serve as spads who are bound by civil service codes.

Amid alarm from senior civil servants, Mr Ó Muilleoir had asked Mr Howell: “Would you be content if I were to sign off on the business plan on Wednesday afternoon?”

The former finance minister insisted that he had been merely consulting the influential republican close to Gerry Adams and not seeking his consent to the plan for retrospective cost controls.

However, the RHI Inquiry ruled that was not what had happened and Mr Ó Muilleoir had indeed asked for the publicly unaccountable republican’s consent for the massive decision.

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