BBC News Northern Ireland

Information was "withheld" from a Stormont scrutiny committee by departmental officials bringing in the botched RHI scheme, a senior MLA has said.

Image source, Press

The SDLP's Patsy McGlone said he had become "angry" as he watched evidence emerge at the public inquiry into the scandal.

He said he now has "multiple concerns" about how the flawed green energy initiative was managed.

The Enterprise Committee wanted information on the levels of the subsidies offered through the RHI scheme and the provision of that information was delayed, with DETI explaining that it was awaiting EU approval for the initiative.

Mr Scoffield (below) wants to know why the committee was so keen to see the tariffs.

Image source, RHI Inquiry

"Presumably if the public purse was paying for something you want to see how much it was - in other words, the detail of the cost," Mr McGlone says.

"It would be extremely unusual if the tariffs weren't included," he adds.

Conor Macauley
BBC News NI Agriculture and Environment Correspondent

The least the Enterprise Committee would've expected was to be told by DETI about the differences in the two options for the RHI scheme, says Mr McGlone.

He explains that the committee was considering the approval of the scheme at a time when "budgets were being constrained and expenditure for the public good was paramount".

Image source, Getty Images

"It's not as if we're talking about £100,000 or something like that here or there."

"Savings of that magnitude... certainly would've triggered a reaction at the committee - I've no doubt about it."

Two options were considered for how the RHI scheme would be run - one was an up-front grants offer, known as a challenge fund, and the other was an ongoing subsidy initiative, which was ultimately adopted.

As the inquiry has already heard, the first of those would've been better value, providing more renewable heat over its lifetime and costing at least £200m less than the model that was chosen by DETI.

Asked if the Enerprise Committee was ever aware of that, Mr McGlone says it wasn't and had it been told about it it "would be a trigger for further questions".

"It's probably one of a number of items that I'm very surprised about in how this whole scheme was handled and managed," he adds.

All of the details that DETI provided about the RHI scheme to the Enterprise Committee appeared to be "kosher", says Mr McGlone.

Image source, RHI Inquiry

Nothing was flagged up the the committee that suggested that department was "getting this wrong".

"None of that was appearing before us and we were reliant on the candour and expertise of those officials appearing before us to advise us."

Inquiry chair Sir Patrick Coghlin asks what committee's reaction would have been if DETI had gone to it and said it was not intending to introduce tiered tariffs and a mechanism allowing the scheme to be suspended, as existed in the Great Britain RHI scheme.

Image source, RHI Inquiry

"If they'd given you that sort of detail would that have rung any alarm bells?" he asks.

Mr McGlone says that as he has looked through the evidence given to the inquiry he has become "quite angry that information was withheld from the committee".

DETI contracted economic consultants at a cost of about £100,000 to advise in on setting up the RHI scheme, as well as a legal firm to draw up the regulations.

Mr McGlone says that if the Enterprise Committee had sought further external expertise to then scrutinise the legislation for scheme that DETI was providing to it there would have been questions raised.

Image source, Getty Images

"The public would be asking, legitimately: 'Why are you doing this when other specialists... had already looked at this?'" he says.

He adds that if the committee was "so cynical" about all policy and legislation it "would not get another job done" and there would be "considerable further unnecessary cost to the public purse".

"Should we have challenged either specialist legal advice or specialist economic advice we would seriously wind up chasing our tails."

Throughout the lifetime of the RHI scheme it was "being referred to as successful", says Mr McGlone.

But he says that issues that emerged later were never brought before the Enterprise Committee.

"There was no evidence or information provided to us about overruns of budgets until it was literally squeezed out of them in the latter stages," he adds.

MLAs on the assembly committees are "utterly reliant" on the "professionalism" of civil servants dealing with particular policy or legislation to "describe what they're bringing forward", says Mr McGlone.

Image source, Getty Images

The committees consider and scrutinise the work of ministers and departments, covering everything from proposals for laws to how budgets are spent.

Mr McGlone's point is that MLAs are, of course, not experts on everything that comes before them - in this case, it's unlikely that each of the 11 politicians on the Enterprise Committee would be well versed in renewable energy matters.

Mr Scoffield asks what the Enterprise Committee's relationship was like with Stormont's Department of Enterprise Trade and Investment (DETI), which was setting up and running the RHI scheme.

Mr McGlone says relations were "businesslike" and he had no concerns at the time, and no reason to "doubt either professionalism of the officials" who appeared before them or the evidence, information or advice they provided.

Image source, RHI Inquiry

However, Mr McGlone says that looking at the evidence presented to the inquiry he has concerns that would not have been apparent in 2011-12.

"I've seen multiple occasions when the internal management of the department was completely askew," he says.

"It presents a very poor picture," he adds.

Patsy McGlone (below, left) has been an SDLP MLA for the Mid-Ulster constituency since 2003.

He was chair of the Northern Ireland Assembly's Enterprise Committee when the 2012 RHI regulations were passed, and its role was to scrutinse and approve them.

Image source, RHI Inquiry

Inquiry counsel David Scoffield QC begins with the familiar process of confirming the validity of the Mr McGlone's written witness statements.

You can find the statement here on the inquiry's website here, external.

BBC News Northern Ireland

Cost controls were taken out of the RHI scheme not once but twice, the inquiry heard.

The law firm Arthur Cox was hired to help DETI officials with draft regulations for the scheme and was told to mirror the rules around cost controls in the similar initiative in Great Britain.

Image source, Getty Images

It provided regulations containing cost controls for the department, but when the plan was put to public consultation in the summer of 2011 there was no mention of cost measures.

Alan Bissett, a former partner at Arthur Cox, said he only found out several months ago that the regulations consulted on were not the ones provided by his firm.

BBC News Northern Ireland

An independent inquiry into the RHI scandal was established in January last year by the then finance minister Máirtín Ó Muilleoir.

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

The RHI Inquiry began this week and Sir Patrick Coghlin (below, centre), a retired Court of Appeal judge, is its chair and has been given full control over how it will operate.

Image source, Pacemaker

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 faced calls to resign from her role as Northern Ireland's first minister in December last year.

Image source, PA

She resisted, and Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness then quit as deputy first minister a year ago yesterday 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 12 months on from that Northern Ireland remains without a devolved administration.

If you want a bit more detail on the background to the scandal and the subsequent inquiry, here's our need-to-know guide on the RHI scheme.

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 - one estimate put it at £700m if permanent cost controls aren't introduced - and the bill will have to be picked up by the Northern Ireland taxpayer.

Before we begin, here's a quick refresher on what this whole thing's about...

The Renewable Heat Incentive scheme - or RHI for short - came to the fore of the Northern Ireland public's knowledge in autumn 2016, and no-one would have expected it to have the consequences it has done since then.

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.

It's a significant day in the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) Inquiry as we hear from the first politician to be called to give evidence.

The SDLP's Patsy McGlone will be answering questions about his role in examining the RHI scheme when he was the chair of Stormont's Enterprise Committee.

Welcome along to our live coverage - we'll have a live video stream as well as text commentary throughout the day, so stick with us to stay informed.