Image source, AFP

Mr Lunny's high hopes of cramming both Moy Park witnesses into one day comes crashing into the buffers of Sir Patrick Coghlin's unbreakable rule that the inquiry knocks off early on Fridays.

Ms McCollum will have to come back another time and so will we but not until the inquiry reconvenes on 4 September.

Time to rush out the door and enjoy the sunshine while it lasts.

Have a great summer!

BBC News NI

Poultry giant Moy Park got an "indirect benefit" from the RHI scheme, the inquiry was told.

It allowed a "significant gap" to emerge between what its suppliers were spending on heat and the fuel allowance it provided them.

And that meant it did not have to make up the difference straight away, to the advantage of the company.

Mr Lunny suggested the company had viewed the farmers' RHI payments as an income "safety net".

But senior executive David Mark denied that and said Moy Park had tried to encourage "responsible" use of heat by their suppliers.

Image source, RHI Inquiry

Moy Park's executives didn't ever discuss the RHI scheme and the assistance it offered to the company's farmers in modernising their heating systems, says Ms McCollum.

She says that the modernising of suppliers' new heating systems was a factor in increasing the firm's overall performance.

the witness says she first became aware of the tension between the company and its farmers about the shortfall between the fuel subsidy it offered and the fuel they were using - as discussed at length with Mr Mark today - in early 2017.

Image source, RHI Inquiry

With the close of play approaching, it'll be a short appearance before the inquiry for Janet McCollum, the recently departed chief executive of Moy Park.

She was with the firm since 1993, rising to chief financial offer and then becoming chief executive at the start of 2014.

You'll find her witness statement on the inquiry's website here, external.

One prominent poultry producer was referred to as a "top class RHI farmer!!!!!!" by Mr Mark in an internal Moy Park email in 2015.

The comment was made in relation to Tom Forgrave (below), who appeared before the inquiry last week.

Mr Lunny says the comment could be interpreted as a suggestion that "their primary purpose" was "harvesting" RHI subsidies rather than growing chickens.

Image source, RHI Inquiry

Mr Mark says he couldn't see the justification in installing small and expensive biomass boilers in a shed rather than one biomass boiler and a cheaper gas-powered boiler.

When it's suggested by the inquiry chair Sir Patrick Coghlin that the reason might've been that it was done "to make money from RHI, the witness says he "couldn't see any other explanation to it" but he had no evidence to support his "concern".

Mr Forgrave told the inquiry last week that he was "shocked" by the comment and said Mr Mark had made an "awful assumption... to label me the way he has".

Mr Mark is asked about his engagements with Andrew Crawford.

He met the DUP adviser at Dr Crawford's brother's farm in late July 2015.

Neither of them recalls any discussion of RHI.

"It was really pleasantries and then we moved on," the witness said.

Image source, RHI Inquiry

On 4 August, just a few days later, Mr Mark forwarded internally within Moy Park, information that he said he got from "a contact in government".

This was a warning from from a boiler installer, BSH, that DETI were proposing to change the tariff to tackle abuse of the scheme - effectively encouraging customers to hurry up with their applications.

The BSH warning had been sent to Dr Crawford on 3 August, the day before Mr Mark forwarded it within Moy Park.

Mr Lunny asks if it was likely that Mr Mark received the document from Dr Crawford.

The witness says he can see the logic of that but he has no record or memory of it.

The alternative government sources would have been Stuart Wightman or Seamus Hughes.

The RHI scheme was due to close on 16 February 2016 but there was a two-week delay to that and it eventually shut at the end of that month.

In an email, Moy Park's then chief executive Janet McCollum wrote to Mr Mark and his colleague Mike Mullan: "Thank you for all your encouragement and involvement in securing this extension - well done."

Image source, Getty Images

Asked what role he had in extending the scheme, Mr Mark says: "I honestly have no recollection."

He denies meeting any DUP advisers at that time: "They're not areas in which I would have mixed."

In January 2016 it was rumoured that the RHI scheme would close in March that year - by January cost controls had come into effect and the scheme was less generous that it had been.

Mr Mark wrote in an internal email that his "best guess" was that its farmers could get "150 to 200 boilers fitted in this window".

Image source, Getty Images

Mr Lunny says it looks like Moy Park was "pulling out all the stops" and it also fitted four boilers at its own premises - two in broiler houses and two in hatcheries.

In an email, Mr Mark instructed that because time was tight the boilers in the hatcheries should be quickly set up to "heat a small radiator" in order to get them qualified for the RHI subsidy and the full heating system could be set up later.

Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) ministerial adviser Dr Andrew Crawford (below) told Moy Park in January 2016 that the RHI scheme would soon be closing.

Moy Park executive Alan Gibson sent an internal email - marked "in absolute confidence" - that stated that a "final push [is] needed on our own farms and contract growers" to get farmers signed up to the scheme.

Mr Mark and Moy Park executive Mike Mullan discussed by email what "influence we can exert to soften the blow of future plans".

Mr Mullen suggested that they "could go up and see Mr Crawford!" - a reference to the DUP adviser.

Internal emails from Moy Park show that there was a push from the firm to speed up farmers' applications for the RHI scheme.

In one, Mr Mark wrote: "If we delay and they miss funding it will be bad for morale and a missed opportunity for [Moy Park].

Image source, RHI Inquiry

The firm's own calculations show that its farmers - 298 in total - accounted for 31.3% of the spike in applications to the scheme in the last five months of 2015, which caused the vast projected overspend on the scheme.

The inquiry barrister Mr Lunny says that's a "significant portion" of the spike but Mr Mark sees it a different way, noting that about "70% of the spike is not Moy Park".

"While we were very much a contributor to the spike we didn't feel we were the driver of the spike."

Moy Park was anticipating at the end of July 2015 that about 200 poultry sheds would be fitted with biomass boilers on the RHI scheme in August and September that year.

At the start of July the firm had told DETI that it was expecting 180 installations across the whole year.

Image source, Getty Images

The changes to make the scheme less lucrative were due to take effect in October and Mr Mark says that once people knew that "it was clear" that they "were going to try and get in before" the deadline.

He tells the inquiry that he "didn't think" to inform DETI that the numbers of its suppliers who were about sign up to the scheme was going to increase dramatically.

Moy Park had interaction in 2015 with DETI - the department running the RHI scheme - about planned changes to the initiative in autumn that year that would make it less lucrative.

In February, Mr Mark informed DETI official Stuart Wightman that Moy Park was expecting the owners of 200 new poultry houses to join the RHI scheme, each with 99kW boilers that would qualify for the most lucrative subsidy on offer.

Image source, RHI Inquiry

The next month, Mr Wightman told him that no changes to the scheme were expected until October and that the new legislation would allow for a reduction in the subsidies.

In April, Mr Mark gave another DETI official Seamus Hughes details of Moy Park's poultry sheds, the number that were operating with biomass boilers and those planned for the future.

In early July, Mr Mark had another conversation with Mr Wightman - his note of the meeting contains the words "over-budget".

Mr Lunny is about to launch into another area of interest when Sir Patrick butts in to remind time that it's time for lunch.

"Time flies when you're having a wonderful time," he jokes.

We'll be back at 14:00.

There was a "potential indirect benefit" for Moy Park if the RHI scheme was making up for the shortfall between what the firm was offering as a fuel allowance as the amount of fuel its suppliers were using, says Mr Lunny.

But Mr Mark denies that the firm discussed that.

Image source, Getty Images

He insists that it didn't want to overcompensate its farmers and therefore it had to reduce the allowance because it had no firm evidence of how much fuel they were using.

"Genuinely... we were trying to ensure that we got this thing right and we didn't inadvertently inflate heat."

The RHI scheme was never intended to be a subsidy for the poultry industry, notes Dr MacLean.

Mr Mark had said in his March 2014 email that a significant drop in income for a farmer's poultry was "not an unrecoverable disaster" because the money they would earn from the scheme would cover much of it.

Image source, RHI Inquiry

Dr MacLean tells him that the scheme was therefore subsiding renewable heat production - as had been intended - and also poultry farming as a whole.

"That's surely not what the RHI was ever designed to do."

There was an ongoing tension between Moy Park and its farmers about what the fuel allowance should be, agrees Mr Mark.

But he says the firm never had any discussion about how farmers were making up for the shortfall between their allowance and the cost of the hat they were using in the poultry production.

Image source, Getty Images

And nor was there any talk about how the RHI scheme could be making up for the shortfall or how it could be used as a safety net for farmers in that context, he says.

But in an email he wrote in March 2014 he referred to the income from the scheme as a "big safety net" for farmers in terms of reduced income for birds for inefficient farmers.

He explains that that's a different context to the fuel allowance and had "nothing to do with the amount of heat they were using".

Evidence suggests that Moy Park knew there was a real risk that what it was allowing its farmers for fuel costs was significantly less that what was being used, says Mr Lunny.

And Sir Patrick Coghlin says he can't "see any escape from the fact" that the firm decided to do that to benefit itself.

Inquiry panellist Dr Keith MacLean asks if Moy Park was consistently pitching its fuel allowance to farmers "much, much lower" than the level of heat they were using because it believed the heat was being used wastefully.

Mr Mark says the firm was trying to "guard against" irresponsible use of heat.

Inquiry panel member Dame Una O'Brien gets to the nub of the discussion of fuel price calculations.

She asks whether Moy Park believed it could slash its fuel alloances for farmers to the "absolute minimum" because the firm knew its suppliers had a separate, substantial income from the RHI scheme that would cover the drop.

Image source, RHI Inquiry

Mr Mark rejects that, saying that his view was the direct opposite.

"We can't be seen to encourage inflation of heat because we saw that was one of the issues on the RHI scheme," he says, adding that the firm wanted to see responsible heat usage.

Moy Park paid an allowance to its farmers to help pay for fuel, based based on the fuel usage on their farms from the previous year.

Before the introduction of biomass Moy Park supplied the liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) - the firm knew how much was being used and how much poultry was being produced by each farmer.

But the firm did not control the supply of biomass pellets and Mr Mark says farmers refused to give Moy Park details of their use of biomass, therefore leaving it without the same evidence base for that fuel as it had for LPG use.

Image source, RHI Inquiry

Fueling a hot water heating system was more expensive than the old gas boilers.

Mr Lunny asks Mr Mark whether he agrees that since biomass systems have been introduced there has been a significant shortfall between the fuel allowance and the cost of the fuel farmers have to use.

The witness accepts that there is a possibility that there was a shortfall.

Moy Park's poultry farmers had to switch to modern heating systems for their sheds if they wanted to stay competitive, which drove many them to the RHI scheme.

The firm's pricing structure was a complex one based on an industry costs average - as production efficiency improved on more farms and costs reduced, the price growers were being given for their chickens was reduced.

Image source, Getty Images

Farmers who hadn't updated their heating systems were therefore earning less because their production costs were higher - they were then under pressure to make the switch.

Mr Mark accepts that's true, saying that the industry has "relentless requirement for efficiency" and the drive was to "keep people making investment" in their farms.