Civil servants and consultants involved in the creation and running of the RHI scheme will provide evidence between now and Christmas, Mr Scoffield tells the inquiry.

Precise details as to who will be called after that and when are yet to be determined.

But both Arlene Foster and Jonathan Bell - former enterprise ministers - will appear next year, as will a series of current and former DUP advisers.

Those will include Timothy Cairns, Dr Andrew Crawford (above), Stephen Brimstone, John Robinson, and Timothy Johnston.

Witnesses will appear in sequence - that is, they will give evidence in the chronological order of their involvement in the scheme - in order to make its work as efficient as possible.

The inquiry has gathered evidence by issuing notices ordering bodies and individuals to produce relevant material, says Mr Scoffield.

Image source, Getty Images

He says that in some cases hundreds of thousands of pages of documents were presented as a result of a single notice, particularly by Stormont departments.

Civil service email accounts, telephone records and other resources have also been opened up to the inquiry.

Mr Scoffield explains the concept of enhanced participatory rights for key participants in the RHI Inquiry.

Enhanced rights may include access to witness statements and the right to be represented by counsel at certain hearings.

Image source, Pacemaker

Crucially, those offered enhanced rights include people and organisations who "may face criticism from the inquiry".

There are also three "core participants" - Stormont's Department for the Economy, the Department of Finance, and the regulators Ofgem, who effectively ran the scheme.

The RHI Inquiry will be "independent and impartial", Mr Scoffield says.

He adds that it will also be "comprehensive and inclusive" and anyone can provide evidence that they believe could be relevant to the inquiry.

Image source, RHI Inquiry

It is "hard to find a taxpayer in Northern Ireland who does not have questions to ask" about the RHI scheme and how it threatened public spending on issues like health and education, he goes on.

Not everyone will be "content" with the inquiry's ultimate conclusions, he says, but they should be satisfied with the fairness of its work.

Mr Scoffield moves on to the terms of reference of the RHI Inquiry, and says its scope is "broad" both in terms of timespan - from the scheme's set-up to closure - and the amount of people involved in the saga.

Image source, RHI Inquiry

He says "particular attention" will be paid to the role of ministers, special advisers, civil servants and consultants to "determine whether their actions complied with professional standards and standards in public life".

But he adds that anyone hoping to see the inquiry panel determine that someone is "civilly or criminally liable" for their role in the RHI scheme will "inevitably be disappointed".

Mr Scoffield says the RHI scheme did not really come to the attention of the public until a BBC Spotlight programme that was broadcast on 6 December last year.

A short clip of the programme - presented by Conor Spackman - is shown to those present in the chamber.

That is followed by a clip from another BBC programme, this time presented by Stephen Nolan, which features an interview with former enterprise minister Jonathan Bell (above), who made allegations about the role of DUP advisers in the scheme.

The advisers have denied the claims.

Mr Scoffield describes the interview with the then DUP MLA Mr Bell as "gripping television", adding that it could be viewed as "explosive".

He adds that it was probably unprecedented in Northern Ireland for a former minister to turn on their party in the way that Mr Bell did.

Mr Scoffield touches on the Northern Ireland Assembly's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) inquiry into the RHI scheme, which ran throughout the autumn last year.

Image source, NI Assembly

He says "new and interesting information" was drip-fed into the public domain and became the subject of "political jousting".

He details an exchange of text messages between two top civil servants that appears to suggest that some of those details were also only emerging to the Department for the Economy at that time, causing concern to its permanent secretary.

A "major milestone" in uncovering the problems of the RHI scheme was the Northern Ireland Audit Office's report into it in the summer of 2016, external, says Mr Scoffield.

The Audit Office monitors public spending, assessing whether it has been done for the purposes it was intended.

He quotes from the report's conclusion, in which the auditor general said the scheme was "vulnerable to abuse".

The auditor general put a £1.18bn cost on the RHI scheme at the time, and Mr Scoffield says that, based on the figures in that report, there was a shortfall in money to fund the scheme of more than half a billion pounds.

But he adds that the financial implications for the scheme are up for "debate and argument".

There will be no "parade of the guilty parties" in Mr Scoffield's opening statement, he says.

The scheme's failures and who was responsible for those will emerge at the end of the inquiry.

Image source, RHI Inquiry

He warns that this opening "will not provide all of the answers which the public legitimately want to hear" about the RHI scheme.

In fact, it is likely to "raise as many questions as it answers".

One thing that has emerged from the evidence gathered so far, he adds, is that there is "precious little within the scope of our terms of reference that is wholly uncontentious".

David Scoffield QC begins his opening statement, saying that the team has worked "assiduously" since it was set up.

He says he has the "dubious pleasure" of being appointed the inquiry's senor counsel and his job to present the evidence that has been gathered.

Image source, RHI Inquiry

Mr Scoffield says he apologises in advance of for "any episodes of tedium" in what will come from him over the next couple of days but stresses that the purpose of his address is help the public to better understand what is about to unfold.

"It is not to merely whet the listener's appetite - although I hope it might do so - but rather to set the scene and sharpen the senses for the oral evidence to follow."

Sir Patrick concludes his statement by addressing the political atmosphere engendered by the RHI scheme.

Image source, RHI Inquiry

"This inquiry was established in the wake of a media and political turmoil, during which strongly-worded allegations and repudiations were exchanged," he says.

"This inquiry was set up to provide a measured, objective and publicly transparent investigation of the facts in accordance with the terms of reference."

Sir Patrick outlines the inquiry's mode of operation - phase one will cover the original design and implementation of the RHI scheme.

Image source, RHI Inquiry

He warns the media that coverage of proceedings in the chamber is at his discretion.

He says media outlets should "bear in mind the anxiety and emotional distress" that may be felt by some witnesses in giving evidence.

Inquiry chair Sir Patrick Coghlin kicks off the proceedings with a brief opening statement.

The lawyers we will become familiar with over the coming months formally introduce themselves to the chair - they include those representing Stormont departments and the DUP.

Image source, RHI Inquiry

Sir Patrick says the oral hearings have been preceded by several months of "long hours of close analysis" of over one million pages of documents.

He introduces his fellow inquiry panel member Dame Una O'Brien and assessor Dr Keith MacLean.

Today is the opening day of the RHI Inquiry's public hearings and they will take place in the Senate chambr at Stormont's Parliament Buildings.

First of all, we can expect a short statement from Sir Patrick Coghlin, the inquiry chair.

Image source, Pacemaker

The inquiry's senior counsel David Scoffield QC will then give an opening statement, which is expected to continue for most of the rest of this week.

He will outline the context in which the inquiry was set up and its terms of reference, as well as detailing how the inquiry has been working so far and what themes have emerged in the evidence it has gathered.

BBC News Northern Ireland

Today marks the opening day of public hearings of the independent RHI Inquiry, which was established in January by the then finance minister Máirtín Ó Muilleoir.

He ordered the inquiry in the wake of the huge public concern and what was then a developing political crisis surrounding the scheme.

Image source, Pacemaker

Sir Patrick Coghlin (above), a retired Court of Appeal judge, was appointed as the inquiry's chair and was given full control over its scope and execution.

It will look at:

• the design and introduction of the RHI scheme
• the scheme's initial operation, administration, promotion and supervision
• the introduction of revised subsidies and a usage cap for new scheme claimants in 2015
• the scheme's closure

For more information on the RHI Inquiry, you can read our handy Q&A.

When the scale of the overspend emerged, public and political concern rocketed.

As the minister in charge of the Stormont department that set up the RHI scheme, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Arlene Foster (below) faced calls to resign from her role as Northern Ireland's first minister in December last year.

Image source, AFP

She resisted, and Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness then quit as deputy first minister in protest at the DUP's handling of what had by then become a full-blown political crisis.

That move brought about the collapse of the Northern Ireland Executive, and as we near a year on from that Northern Ireland remains without a devolved administration.

There were critical flaws in the way the RHI scheme was set up that left it open to abuse and that later saw its budget spiral out of control.

Crucial cost curbs that existed in a similar scheme in Great Britain were not replicated and claimants could effectively earn more money the more fuel they burned.

That was because the subsidies on offer for renewable fuels were far greater than the cost of the fuels themselves.

As a result, the scheme racked up a huge projected overspend - £700m at the most recent estimate - and the bill will have to be picked up by the Northern Ireland taxpayer.

The Renewable Heat Incentive scheme - or RHI for short - came to the fore of the Northern Ireland public's knowledge in autumn last year.

Few people, if anyone, would have expected it to have the consequences it has done in the months that followed.

It was set up by the Northern Ireland Executive in 2012, as a way of encouraging businesses to switch from using fossil fuels to renewable sources for generating their heat.

Those who signed up were offered financial incentives to buy new heating systems and the fuel to run them.

Welcome along to the first session of BBC News NI's live coverage of the Renewable Heat Incentive Inquiry.

Image source, AFP

It's a crisp autumn day up on Stormont hill but the heat is on inside Parliament Buildings, where the long-awaited inquiry will begin at 10:30 GMT.

We'll have a live stream of proceedings as well as a text commentary throughout the day, so do stick with us and we'll keep you informed.