Patsy McGlone accepts that the Enterprise Committee could've done "much, much more" to scrutinise DETI's handling of the RHI scheme.

Image source, RHI Inquiry

But he qualifies that by saying that even if the members had asked for more information from the department it may not have been "presented to us in a fulsome, proper and professional way".

A "free flow of information" is fundamental to the committee's work, says the MLA.

The Enterprise Committee wasn't happy that it had a "wholly inadequate" opportunity to consider the closure of the RHI scheme in February 2016, according to Patsy McGlone.

The suddenness of the shutdown announcement had led to MLAs on the committee receiving a flood of emails and call from people complaining about the decision - that caused them to argue against the closure.

Image source, Getty Images

Looking back on it now, Mr McGlone says that had the committee been aware of the scale of the financial issues there "wouldn't be a problem" with it "agreeing a course of action".

He says the scheme had clearly been running out of control from midway through 2015 and he can't understand why the department left it until "beyond the last moment" to shut the scheme.

"We were landed with a shambolic situation."

The next time the Enterprise Committee came across the RHI scheme was in February 2016 when DETI moved to shut it down.

The then enterprise minister Jonathan Bell (below) explained in a letter that an "unprecedented surge in applications" - about 900 in just six weeks - had helped Northern Ireland to achieve a key target for renewable heat production.

"However, this success comes at a price," wrote the minister, who explained that even without new applications there would be a £19m overspend every year for the next five years.

Image source, Pacemaker

He proposed an immediate closure, which would "not allow time to follow the established convention of seeking the committee's approval".

Mr Bell said he wouldn't contemplate that course of action if it wasn't for the "very serious and urgent risk to public finances".

Mr McGlone says his big question when he received the letter was: "Why wasn't [the scheme's closure] dealt with earlier?"

DETI officials were "trying to hold their finger in the dam" while not telling the committee about the scale of the RHI scheme problems, Patsy McGlone tells the inquiry.

He says he didn't find out the full scale of the disaster until he read the Northern Ireland Audit Office's report about it, external in the summer of 2016.

Image source, RHI Inquiry

"I was absolutely shocked and astounded by the scale of the problem," he says.

He was particularly concerned about the way that so much detail had been withheld from the committee.

There was "no sense of urgency" given to the Enterprise Committee by DETI when the department was presenting proposals for the RHI scheme's subsidies to be cut in the autumn of 2015, says Patsy McGlone.

The budget had been blown and from the start of the summer that year civil servants had been scrambling to get a handle on the scheme's spending.

Image source, Getty Images

In his witness statement, Mr McGlone says officials "could have been more forthright in their explanations" of what was happening and their claims that the RHI had been a success were "clearly not accurate".

What they said "suggested that there was nothing to worry about", he adds.

He also says he fears that the scale of the problems would not have been fully disclosed to the committee "had those problems not quickly become matters of public knowledge".

In December 2014, the regulations for the domestic RHI scheme were debated by MLAs in the assembly.

As the Enterprise Committee chair, Patsy McGlone gave a speech, during which he said the committee would "pay particular attention" to the reviews that were to be built in to the initiative.

Image source, RHI Inquiry

That passage is identical to what he said in the debate on the original, non-domestic scheme in 2012.

Asked if there was an "element of cutting and pasting your speech", Mr McGlone says he has to "make a confession here" - he doesn't write them.

"It would be written by the clerk or the deputy clerk of the committee."

MLAs on the Enterprise Committee had been given information about the RHI scheme that should've prompted them to be much more inquisitive, says Sir Patrick Coghlin.

He notes that they'd heard that there was a risk of a distortion of the market, that planned reviews hadn't happened and that applications had doubled over six months.

He says those factors should have led MLAs to press DETI for explanations, not least because the committee was responsible to the public for ensuring that money was properly spent.

"Should you not have at least asked questions?" asks Sir Patrick.

Mr McGlone accepts that they should've done so.

DETI kept industry "much, much better informed" about what was happening with the RHI scheme while the Enterprise Committee was left in the dark, says Patsy McGlone.

"Perhaps we should've had our meetings at Moy Park," he says with a raise of his eyebrows.

Image source, Getty Images

That's a reference to the fact that civil servants within the department had been in regular contact with the poultry giant about plans to cut the subsidies on offer.

Moy Park used that information to encourage its farmers to get signed up to the scheme before it became much less lucrative.

Inquiry chair Sir Patrick Coghlin, like his two panellists, is not impressed by the strength of the Enterprise Committee's scrutiny of the RHI scheme.

Image source, RHI Inquiry

He says the committee wasn't given any assurance that the planned regular reviews of the initiative to check that it was fit for purpose were actually happening.

"That's something that I take the view now should have been questioned by the committee."

Inquiry panellist Dr Keith MacLean questions whether the Enterprise Committee's scrutiny of the RHI scheme ever touched on whether it was providing value for money.

"That part of it doesn't seem to have featured in your assessment," he tells Patsy McGlone.

Image source, RHI Inquiry

The MLA again insists that the scheme was being "repeatedly" presented to the committee as being successful.

Dame Una O'Brien says the committee appears to have "taken everything the department told you at face value" and it had little information with which it could challenge the civil servants who were running the RHI.

As part of the conditions for its approval, the RHI scheme was to be reviewed in early 2014.

That would've been a chance to spot some of the critical flaws in the initiative and check whether it was offering value for money but it never happened.

Image source, Getty Images

In a speech to the assembly in October 2012, shortly before the scheme opened, Patsy McGlone said that the Enterprise Committee would "pay particular attention to the reviews".

But given that they didn't take place, he's asked if the committee "lived up" to the expectation he'd created in his speech.

Mr McGlone tells the inquiry that if the scheme's problems were "concealed from us" that made the committee's work "very, very difficult".

The RHI scheme was discussed at an Enterprise Committee meeting in June 2014.

DETI had suggested in its latest update that it could be time to review the subsidies on offer given that the scheme had been up and running for about 18 months.

Image source, RHI Inquiry

Patsy McGlone wasn't at the meeting but he's asked if the remembers anyone on the committee asking what DETI was doing about that review.

"I can't remember anyone saying that," he says.

Sir Patrick gently reminds him the SDLP MLA that he wasn't at the meeting and the inquiry dissolves into laughter!

The RHI scheme was presented to MLAs as the "all-singing, all-dancing, new green energy future", says Patsy McGlone.

He says that when the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI) was planning to widen the scheme in 2013 it didn't give the Enterprise Committee sufficient detail about what would be involved or the potential problems.

Chair Sir Patrick Coghlin says that had more information been provided "perhaps you might have raised some question".

Mr McGlone says that's a "fairly consistent refrain right throughout" the RHI fiasco.

DETI was consistently telling the committee that the scheme was a "success", he says, even up until July 2015, by which point the massive financial problems were clear to civil servants.

Mr McGlone says the committee is "utterly reliant on people being open, professional" and giving the necessary information to allow it to make "informed decisions".

Inquiry chair Sir Patrick Coghlin (below) asks if the Enterprise Committee kept a file detailing the issues it had raised about the RHI scheme to check whether they'd been addressed by the department.

Patsy McGlone says it didn't but he queries whether that's the role of the committee.

Image source, Getty Images

"At what point does the statutory assembly scrutiny committee become almost a management committee for the department?" he asks.

Sir Patrick says it seems a matter of common sense to keep a record of concerns.

As the inquiry heard yesterday, the Northern Ireland Assembly's Enterprise Committee asked the energy charity Action Renewables for its advice on the RHI scheme before it was opened in 2012.

The organisation's head Michael Doran told the committee he was supportive of the scheme as it was set up but he pointed out one potential problem.

He said there was too big a difference between the subsidy on offer for smaller boilers and the incentive that larger boilers were eligible for - that led people to install multiple smaller boilers to collect the most lucrative subsidy.

Mr McGlone made a point of putting issue that on record in a speech to the assembly and suggested it should be considered by Stormont's enterprise department, which was running the scheme.

But it wasn't addressed by the department and the MLAs on the committee didn't spot that it had dropped off the agenda.

The SDLP MLA Patsy McGlone settles into the witness chair - the former Stormont Enterprise Committee chair has been here before, way back on day 23 of the inquiry in January.

He's already been sworn in so there's no need for that formality again.

Image source, RHI Inquiry

You'll find his witness statement to the inquiry here, external.

Senior counsel David Scoffield QC explains that the inquiry will use today to look at the Enterprise Committee's involvement in the RHI scheme from early 2013 until its closure in 2016.

The Charity Commission says it's looking at yesterday's inquiry evidence from Action Renewables boss Michael Doran after he admitted that he may have misled it.

The commission began an investigation into Mr Doran's organisation after an Irish News report pointed out that it had facilitated applications to the RHI scheme, external in spite of it being aware of flaws in the scheme.

The commission closed the file after meeting the charity's trustees, who said they didn't know about the problems until December 2016.

But yesterday Mr Doran told the inquiry he'd known from the outset about multiple issues with the RHI, including the absence of cost controls to stop people abusing it.

Inquiry chair Sir Patrick Coghlin said the "inescapable inference" was that Mr Doran was "misleading" the commission.

Mr Doran accepted that it seemed so but denied that there'd been a "cover-up".

Jayne McCormack
BBC News NI politics reporter

A charity that promoted itself as the "leading authority" on renewable heat knew from the outset that the RHI scheme was flawed, the inquiry heard.

Michael Doran, who runs Action Renewables, which claims to promote efficient use of energy, was giving evidence to the inquiry.

He said his organisation had known from the scheme's early days that there was no cost control mechanism to prevent it being exploited for profit.

But he did not tell Stormont's enterprise department about the potential problem because he felt that by doing so could have delayed the introduction of the initiative by more than a year.

BBC News NI

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 major political crisis surrounding the scheme.

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

Image source, Pacemaker

It is looking 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 autumn 2015
• the scheme's closure in February 2016

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 DUP leader Arlene Foster faced calls to resign from her role as Northern Ireland's first minister in December 2016.

Image source, Pacemaker

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. Now, well beyond a year-and-a-half on from that, Northern Ireland remains without a devolved administration.

You can find much more detail on the RHI scheme in our need-to-know guide.