Renewable Heat Incentive Inquiry examining botched energy scheme
DETI's RHI manager Stuart Wightman returns for further session of questions
Inquiry set up after public concern over scheme's huge projected overspend
Retired Court of Appeal judge Sir Patrick Coghlin chairing inquiry at Stormont
Public evidence sessions expected to last into autumn 2018
Image source, Getty ImagesWith the sun shining outside, the inquiry knocks off for the week and it'll return on Monday 18 June.
Mr Wightman will be back then for his fifth appearance before the panel and Sir Patrick asks the inquiry barrister to make sure that will be the last time the witness has to give evidence.
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Image source, PacemakerThere was "panic" within DETI as the extent of the financial crisis caused by the RHI scheme emerged, the inquiry was told.
Civil servant Stuart Wightman said officials were unaware in May 2015 that Northern Ireland taxpayers would be liable for the scheme's vast overspend.
It was much later before he realised that the overspend would have to be met from the department's budget.
Dennison Commercials ordered 11 boilers from FG Renewables on 10 August 2015 and they were all accredited on the RHI scheme by mid-October that year, beating the deadline for the changes to the subsidy rate.
Mr Aiken notes that the boilers were installed and ready to run in under three weeks.
Mr Wightman says there was "quite a supply base waiting to react" because cost controls had depressed the GB market.
Image source, RHI InquiryDETI provision of "insider information" about the RHI scheme to those with a commercial interest in it allowed people to "maximise the amount" of subsidies they could obtain, says Sir Patrick Coghlin.
Peering over his glasses, the inquiry chairman tells Mr Wightman: "I have some difficulty with this."
DETI's advise to those within the renewable energy industry about the changes to the RHI scheme caused "people to pile into" it, according to Mr Aiken.
Another example of how quickly Mr Wightman's "insider information" spread within the renewables industry is revealed by was of an an email from FG Renewables to a Ballyclare lorry and bus dealer Dennison Commercials.
It goes into greater detail about DETI's proposals to change the RHI scheme - this time it was about the plan to close the loophole that allowed claimants to use multiple boilers to each generate the most generous subsidy rate - that's known as the gaming of the initiative.
If Dennison Commercials wanted to benefit from the most lucrative subsidy - 6.4p per kW hour rather than 1.5p rate that was set to be introduced - it was told that it should get its order for biomass boilers in by the following week.
"I don't want to put you under pressure - this has all come to a head very quick and we're getting multiple orders for boilers every day," the email from FG Renewables reads.
The information that Mr Wightman passed to Mr Hegarty soon spread across the renewable energy industry.
At the start of July, heating company FG Renewables emailed a potential customer including details of the DETI's proposed changes to the scheme.
Image source, Getty ImagesThe email read: "If any of our clients are considering installing biomass boiler systems we would advise they should move ASAP to avoid missing out on the best rates from the RHI."
Mr Aiken says that if you observe the cascading effect of this information you can begin to see how the spike in applications in autumn 2015 came about.
In late-June 2015, Mr Wightman had a conversation with Fergal Hegarty of the renewable energy firm Alternative Heat and gave him details of the planned changes to the RHI scheme.
Among what was discussed was DETI's overspend on the scheme, which Mr Wightman said would need to be remedied by a reduction in the subsidies on offer to claimants from October that year.
Image source, Getty ImagesAfterwards, Mr Hegarty sent the details of what was discussed to his colleagues, telling them that they "must do all we can" to get their clients' biomass boilers installed and RHI scheme applications submitted before the changes would come into effect, in order to make the most of the scheme when it was at its most generous.
Mr Hegarty also said that Mr Wightman had given his permission to call for a weekly update on progress with the planned changes to the scheme.
Mr Wightman tells the inquiry that his "intentions were right at the time" but his actions now "look naive" and he "didn't expect the industry to... move so quickly" to act on what he told those within it.
Stormont departments were "almost like planets revolving in different universes" due to the lack of communication between them about the RHI scheme, says inquiry chair Sir Patrick Coghlin.
He questions whether officials within DETI and DFP ever coordinated what they were doing at a crucial phase when the crisis about the scheme was quickly escalating in the summer of 2015.
His remarks come as Mr Aiken reveals correspondence from a finance official in which there is a clear misunderstanding about how the initiative was being funded.
Image source, Getty Images"Nobody cross-fertilises what they're trying to do; there's no direction; there's no leadership as to what should be done," adds Sir Patrick.
The inquiry will have to establish whether officials had a grasp of what was wrong with the scheme and how it should be dealt with, says Mr Aiken.
Mr Wightman says there was a "lot of time wasted" that summer.
In June 2015, Mr Wightman drafted an email to be sent to the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) that operated the GB RHI scheme.
The email explained that DETI wanted to change the way the Northern Ireland scheme was funded and it was looking for information from DECC to back this up.
Image source, Getty ImagesThe department wanted to put a case to DFP and the Treasury that future funding should reflect "actual scheme demand or performance", rather than having to reflect DECC's allocation for its RHI initiative.
The email was sent to DECC on 7 July and DETI didn't get a reply until 5 August.
BBC Radio Ulster
The Stephen Nolan Show
The inquiry wraps up the day's opening session and its time to nip down the corridor for a bite to eat.
Join us again at 14:00.
In the meantime, you can have a listen back to today's The Stephen Nolan Show, external, which - along with the help of the News Letter's political editor Sam McBride - took an in-depth look at some of the evidence the inquiry has heard this week.
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Civil servants "weren't alive" to the commercial interests in the RHI scheme and had a "sense of naivety" in sharing information about it with those in the renewable energy sector, says Mr Wightman.
Sir Patrick tells him that the inquiry must ask questions about their actions if it is to "stand back and look at why this scheme incurred such a waste of public money".
He adds that he can't understand why DETI civil servants viewed the scheme as "such a success" that they could "go out and meet with somebody in the commercial field and increase the demands on what was a budget that was bust".
He tells Mr Wightman that the risks of doing that weren't recognised.
Mr McCracken's note of the meeting with DETI's Mr Hughes including a point that presaged the spike in applications to the RHI scheme that would come in the autumn of 2015.
"There will be a rush to get [biomass boiler sales] through before the rebranding - short-term opportunity for volume, probably up to November 2015," he wrote.
Image source, RHI InquiryMr Aiken says there's no suggestion that Mr Hughes or Mr Wightman ever told someone to get their application in because there were changes coming.
He says the message taken away by Mr McCracken - whose company Innasol was new to the renewable energy market in Norther Ireland at the time - was that "there's an opportunity here" to make sales.
DETI had been "a bit too open" about the plans for the RHI scheme with those who had a commercial interest in it, admits Mr Wightman.
His admission comes in reference to a June 2015 meeting between DETI civil servant Seamus Hughes and Terence McCracken of the renewable energy firm Innasol, in which they discussed the scheme in some detail.
Mr McCracken's record of the meeting shows that DETI felt the scheme was a "great success".
Asked if that's how the department was viewing it then even though problems were growing, Mr Wightman says officials believed they were "victims of our own success" in having promoted the scheme.
Image source, Getty ImagesMr Hughes also informed Mr McCracken that the scheme was under review because applications had rocketed and finance officials had raised concerns about "the level of expenditure in years to come".
Mr Aiken says that Mr McCracken was getting a "very detailed picture of internal issues within the department" - he asks if DETI should've been as "open and frank" with those with a commercial interest in the scheme.
"There answer would be no," admits Mr Wightman.
Irregular spending in a government department is a "major problem", says Dame Una O'Brien, who has vast experience as a senior Whitehall civil servant having headed the Department of Health.
Mr Aiken adds to that, saying that in civil service terms irregularity is a "massive earthquake".
Image source, GettyDame Una goes on to say that once there's a qualification on a department's accounts it's "extremely difficult to get it removed".
"That's regarded as a serious matter in terms of your ability to look after public money," she adds.
On 12 June, DETIs finance director Trevor Cooper agreed to send a note to the Department of Finance and Personnel (DFP) outlining the problems with the RHI scheme and DETI's proposed remedies.
A draft was sent to Mr Wightman and his boss John Mills for comment.
Image source, RHI InquiryThe note wasn't received by DFP until 1 July and Mr Aiken says there's limited detail in it about what was known within DETI about the extent of the problem.
And Dr MacLean notes that the document does not mention anything about potential budget breaches and resulting effects on the Northern Ireland block grant.
Image source, RHI InquiryIn June 2015 Mr Wightman's subordinate in DETI's RHI scheme team Seamus Hughes (above) sought legal advice on a temporary suspension of the initiative, which would've closed it to new applicants.
He was told by government lawyers that this could not be done.
Mr Wightman says their logic in asking the question was: "This is our scheme - can we not just stop the accreditations?"
Image source, Getty ImagesDETI did not realise it had de facto power to suspend the RHI scheme, which would've bought it time to make necessary changes to the initiative when the budget started to run out of control, says Mr Aiken.
Mr Wightman says that if the department had been more prepared it could've reacted better to the sharp rise in applications that was to come in autumn 2015.
"The time to bring it in would've been when things were calm," he admits.
Dr MacLean detects a misunderstanding affecting DETI's proposals for addressing the RHI scheme's problems.
He asks whether there was ever a discussion within the department about tiering and the fact that it "had nothing to do with cost control".
He says it was designed to prevent overcompensation and to the perverse incentive to produce more heat.
Image source, Getty ImagesEven if DETI reduced the tariffs but it had a lot of people claiming subsidies it would still cost a lot of money.
Mr Wightman agrees that "the penny hadn't dropped".
"I just don't think we were alive to the fact that if was a value-for-money control," he says.
Image source, RHI InquiryInquiry chair Sir Patrick Coghlin questions if the decision to drop most of the planned changes to the RHI scheme was the result of DETI officials realising they had "made bad mistakes".
He suggests that the new plan to run with just two changes was an "intention to try to present to the minister an agreed policy without explaining" why the other were dropped and "the sudden embarrassment" about the amount of money that had been spent on the scheme.
Mr Wightman accepts that his was in a "panic" at the time but he insists that officials did "present the facts" to the minister and they "didn't go out of our way to make things look rosy".
Image source, RHI InquiryDame Una O'Brien, who sits on the inquiry panel, says there's a "striking" absence of contact with the minister about what was happening with the RHI scheme in May 2015.
It's "quite a normal thing", she says, for civil servants to send a note to the minister to inform him of problems with a scheme or project.
"The person who's in change of the department is the minister and is entitled to be kept informed when things are going wrong," she adds.