by Sam McBride
Having received the note, McKibbin sent a thunderous two-page memo to McCormick asking for an investigation and an explanation. But the memo ended with a message which bewildered McCormick. McKibbin said:
Finally in your email last night, into which I was copied, you advised that you had a clear message from your Minister and his Special Adviser that the RHI issue was now a matter for the First Minister and me. I have spoken to the First Minister who has made it quite clear that it is the responsibility of DETI to mitigate costs and to urgently cease accruing further liabilities.
Having experienced, as he saw it, Foster’s most senior adviser intervene in his department in an unprecedented way just days earlier to rescind a decision taken by the minister who had legal authority for DETI, now it seemed that Foster and her department were washing their hands of the matter. McCormick was perturbed.
There was added tension because Sterling and McCormick had not only been two of the key figures involved in running the scheme and now in sorting out the mess, but they were two of the permanent secretaries who were shortly expected to apply to be Head of the Civil Service when McKibbin announced his retirement.
Multiple Stormont sources believed that McKibbin was much closer to Sterling, and that may have partly explained why to McCormick it seemed that McKibbin was unfairly dumping the problem in his lap. McCormick later rowed back on that, saying that there had been misunderstandings due to a ‘fog of war’.
But Bell was deeply alarmed by what was going on. It seemed to him that a paper trail was being constructed which said that Foster wanted the scheme closed urgently and the responsibility for doing so rested with him. Yet he knew that Foster’s top lieutenant had stopped his attempt to do just that the previous week. Festering suspicions within Bell – exacerbated by a wider rift with Foster – now seem to have made him view most subsequent decisions, even benign ones, as part of a conspiracy. Foster and those around her dismissed the idea that there was some shadowy attempt to keep RHI open, with the DUP leader saying: ‘It clearly wasn’t the case that we wanted to keep the scheme open. We knew of the seriousness of it, and we wanted to close the scheme.’
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On the night of the 27th, a tumultuous day in which Foster had received allegations of widespread RHI abuse and the Head of the Civil Service was panicking about the scheme, Bell was having a wild night. Three thousand miles west, in the city that never sleeps, Bell was heading up a Stormont trade mission. Having already been in San Francisco for an intense series of meetings with potential investors, he had the evening off in central New York. Cairns, Bell, the minister’s Private Secretary Sean Kerr and DETI Press Officer Karen Fullerton went for a drink in the bar of the four-star Fitzpatrick Hotel where they were staying. Then the small Stormont party headed out for dinner to Ruth’s Chris Steak House, an upmarket chain famous for steaks served sizzling on 260°C plates. But it was the tempting, 200-strong wine list which caught Bell’s attention that night.
Cairns recalled that Bell asked if anyone was having wine. Bell’s dining companions declined but the minister ‘asked if he ordered a bottle of wine for himself, to take the bad look off it, would we get wine glasses’ to which they agreed, Cairns said, before Bell polished off the entire bottle.
But the night was still young and after dinner the group headed to The Irish Pub three blocks away on 7th Avenue. By now Bell was ‘clearly intoxicated’, Cairns said, but they each had a further drink. At this stage, Bell fell asleep, his pint of Guinness half-drunk. The waitress informed them that if the minister did not awaken then they would have to leave as he was clearly intoxicated, his spad told the inquiry. Bell awakened, finished his pint and ordered another. Cairns said they were ‘reluctantly served, but were told if Mr Bell fell asleep we would be asked to leave. He again fell asleep and we were immediately asked to leave’.
The ‘unsteady’ minister had to be helped back to the hotel. The 15-minute walk back took them past Tiffany & Co beside Trump Tower, and the minister sang the Deep Blue Something hit single ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ ‘at full volume’, Cairns recalled.
In his closing submission, Bell’s QC referred to ‘attacks targeted at Mr Bell – he has been accused of … drunkenness’. But he did not deny the accuracy of the claims about his behaviour in New York – nor did Bell himself submit a statement to the inquiry denying what was alleged to have happened.
McCormick, in the language of the senior civil service, referred to the incident euphemistically as ‘quite a late night’ for the minister. The following morning it was noted that Bell was ‘visibly tired at a key meeting’, he said, and ‘it was my impression that, in consequence the minister was unable to participate fully in the meeting in a constructive way, as I would have hoped’.
Bell, whose party was founded by the vehemently teetotal Ian Paisley who denounced ‘the Devil’s buttermilk’, presented a sober evangelical Christian image of himself to the public and spoke out against the dangers of alcohol. But according to his adviser the incident in New York was part of a wider pattern of a minister whose actions did not always live up to his words. Cairns said that on one occasion when Bell had overslept to the extent that he missed Assembly business, he furiously told Mr Cairns and his private secretary: ‘You two boys have f****d up!’ Mr Cairns added: ‘When Mr Bell was acting in an aggressive manner he often swore. This is not something I would condemn anyone for as I would often swear myself, however … Jonathan was attempting to portray an evangelical Christian image on the Nolan Show. This was at odds with my experience.’
On another occasion, Cairns said that Bell had pinned DUP MLA Michelle McIlveen against a wall at the party conference and ‘berated her for some time until she broke down in tears’. Bell vociferously denied those allegations of inappropriate or violent behaviour and suggested they were later invented by the party in an attempt to undermine him after he spoke out about RHI. He highlighted that the party had been happy to promote him and put him forward as a candidate long after many of the alleged incidents.
The minister ‘would be aggressive one minute and your friend the next’, Cairns said, but added that even at the end of their time in Stormont ‘when he wasn’t acting in an aggressive manner he offered me a job in the new company he was setting up to establish trade links with China. He went as far as to offer me a salary of £50,000. This offer was made on the last day before Purdah [the pre-election period]. This highlights his erratic nature’.
McCormick had his own concerns about Bell, particularly around whether he read what was put in front of him. But he said that Bell ‘always appeared to respect my role and position, often with relaxed good humour, and I had absolutely no personal experience of his exerting (or attempting to exert) untoward pressure or bullying, as others have alleged’. The trade mission complete, the DETI party flew back to Northern Ireland. But the globe-trotting minister was off again a few days later, heading to Brussels on 2 February and then Canada on 9 February, meaning that he was out of the country for much of the period in which key decisions about RHI were being taken.
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Initially, DETI officials had proposed a closure date of mid-March. But with the involvement of McKibbin, Foster and Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness, it was decided that the Executive’s urgent procedures should be used for an emergency closure. That required the approval of both Foster and McGuinness. In drafting a request to them, DETI sent a draft submission to the Department of Finance. It explained that ‘during the Autumn of 2015 there was an unprecedented surge in applications. This increase relates to one particular technology – biomass and has been attributed to one particular industry’s wholesale uptake of the scheme. This is the poultry industry’s use of RHI for broiler houses’.
When the document arrived with finance officials, Crawford was unhappy, and on 1 February he asked for the poultry reference to be removed – which it was. DETI Deputy Secretary Chris Stewart was concerned and reinserted the sentence
. But the Department of Finance intervened again, and it was removed a second time. Crawford’s actions meant that the information now going to other ministers was deliberately incomplete.
When asked why he altered the document, Crawford admitted that what he removed was accurate but said it ‘wasn’t solely the poultry industry’ which had driven the spike. Coghlin asked Crawford to ‘think carefully … about any inference that the panel should draw in relation to your removal of this entry, given your family circumstances and your frequent talks to Mr [David] Mark of Moy Park’.
Crawford disputed that he had ‘frequent’ talks with Mark and said ‘it is not in relation to any inference in relation to my family’, adding that as a former DETI spad he had a role in encouraging Moy Park’s growth. In a potentially Freudian slip, he said that ‘singling out Moy Park’, before correcting himself to say ‘the poultry industry, sorry’, was something that was ‘unfair’.
Coghlin said it was ‘undoubtedly true’ that Moy Park had a key role in the spike and asked: ‘Why remove a true fact?’ Crawford said ‘it was the inference that was being created at that time’. Coghlin said: ‘It’s not an inference. That’s what I’m trying to get at with you. The major responsibility for the spike was the poultry industry, and Moy Park in particular. If that was true – and it was – why remove something that was true?’ Crawford said: ‘My concern was the narrative that it was creating.’
Days later, there was another incident which would later add to what by now were Bell’s rampant suspicions about party colleagues. In drafts of an RHI submission to Bell in early February, officials had referred to ‘engaging with OFMdFM’ and the Department of Finance before the closure decision had been taken. That was removed at Cairns’s request. Stewart was concerned at the change and insisted that the reference to the Department of Finance be reinstated because it was a legal requirement to consult that department before invoking the urgent procedure. Cairns said it had been his own attempt to curry favour with Foster who might not want to be linked to the crisis. But he said that a tracked changes version of the document would have gone to Bell, so it was not done behind his back.
Either that version did not go to Bell, or he did not comprehend the change because at a meeting on 10 February, Stewart said he had mentioned the changes in passing to Bell on the assumption he was aware of them. It was immediately apparent that he was not and was furious.
In his Nolan interview, Bell referred to the incident as a ‘cleansing of the record’, saying that Stewart had requested to meet him as a whistleblower – although in the interview Bell had suggested this was at a far earlier stage, in 2015, when in fact it had been right at the end of the scheme in 2016, further implying confusion by Bell. He said that Stewart had said ‘in a very grave and serious tone’ that ‘you don’t know this, but your special adviser is asking for records to be changed’. Stewart said that was utterly wrong and that their exchange had been coincidental as they chatted while waiting for others to join them for a routine meeting.
Foster said that she was unaware of the change and insisted that it was ‘completely meaningless’ because Bell had gone on to mention OFMdFM in his Assembly speech anyway. But she admitted that it was ‘a very strange episode’.
Stewart later felt that the removal of the reference was because ‘there was a desire for the difficult, potentially controversial, decisions that were being made on this matter to be presented as having been made solely by Minister Bell … I think there was a strategy emerging at that point for Jonathan Bell to be front and centre in the decision-making on RHI’. Stewart said that ‘an inescapable conclusion’ was that the effort was to remove any hint that Foster’s spads had been involved.
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On 5 February, Foster and McGuinness approved for closure on 15 February, with the announcement made public in a press release issued by Bell that evening. But it happened to be a Friday evening – a classic slot in which to bury bad news, although he later said that was not the intention. The industry was furious, having expected RHI to be open until at least the end of March. The following Tuesday, Bell flew back to Belfast from Canada and was immediately summoned to Foster’s Parliament Buildings office ahead of his ministerial question time in the Assembly. It was an angry encounter. Bell said that there was an ‘abusive’ atmosphere, with Foster shouting, telling him that he must delay closure. Foster disputed that, saying that Bell had come into the room ‘in a very bad temper’. He stood, she said, ‘with his chest pushed out and he was shouting that he wasn’t going to be made look foolish’.
Foster, who had observed the backlash against sudden closure and was concerned that it might be defeated in court, later said that Bell ‘didn’t want to look foolish’ by doing a U-turn. Bell said that he was primarily concerned about the cost to taxpayers. Foster said that did not make sense because he had been happy to approve a mid-March closure, and a brief extension beyond 15 February would still see RHI closed before then.
That afternoon, Bell met Robinson. The former First Minister said that Bell felt he was being ‘marginalised and alienated’. Robinson said that he advised Bell to have a ‘clear the air’ meeting with Foster.
That evening, Bell and Foster met again. This time it was a calmer affair. Having realised the opposition to sudden closure, he agreed to the two-week delay, despite being unenthusiastic about it. Bell said that he then spoke to McCormick that evening and was reassured by his acceptance of the delay.
The genesis of the two-week delay was indicative of how many key Stormont decisions were taken on the basis of raw political power. If the DUP and Sinn Féin agreed on anything, they had the numbers – and the discipline – to force it through.
Behind closed doors, the two-week timeframe was plucked out of the air by DUP and Sinn Féin spads, with no analysis of the cost to taxpayers nor any expert input from those running RHI. Foster admitted: ‘I don’t think there was any science to it.’
The following day, Sinn Féin’s powerful ‘super spad’, Aidan McAteer, texted Johnston to say: ‘We should keep any discussion of soft landing for renewable heating scheme out of Executive.’ Johnston told the inquiry that it was ‘not unusual’ for the two parties to deliberately keep issues from being discussed at the Executive to keep them from the smaller parties. He said that McAteer would not have wanted the details ‘discussed in front of other Executive parties’ because of possible leaks. The Executive was a leaky ship, with all parties guilty when it suited them, but this showed a conscious effort to keep details of a crisis which would impact every minister’s budget away from those who on paper made up the power-sharing administration. The real decision-making forum was not the symbolically circular Executive table in Stormont Castle; it was in the back rooms where DUP and Sinn Féin advisers met without notetakers.
Cairns, who was present at the heated meeting between Foster and Bell, said that Foster had been ‘up-front and said “this is coming from DFM [deputy First Minister] side … I mean, this is what’s required to get it through”.’ That is consistent with the fact that senior Sinn Féin MLA Conor Murphy publicly claimed credit for the delay. And fellow Sinn Féin MLA Máirtín Ó Muilleoir was not only both privately taking credit for keeping RHI open for two further weeks but also telling a woman hoping to install a boiler that the party wanted to see as many people like her getting approval as possible. Ó Muilleoir told the inquiry that Sinn Féin felt that ‘we’re going to try and get a grace period for these ordinary, genuine applicants’.
Those revelations – which came from emails which the inquiry compelled the party to release – undermined Sinn Féin vice president Michelle O’Neill’s claim at the height of the scandal in January 2017 that her party ‘shut it down straight away’ when the problems became clear.
After the emergence of the emails, Sinn Féin then claimed that even though it had helped to delay closure, it had not been aware that RHI was being abused.
Foster told the inquiry th
at she believed she had told McGuinness, who by that stage was dead, of the abuse allegations – and that even if she had not, that McKibbin would have done so. Sinn Féin reacted furiously. O’Neill told the media that ‘any attack on [McGuinness’s] integrity in government is spurious’ and ‘disgraceful’. She said such ‘attacks’ would be ‘robustly challenged’ and referred to legal action against a DUP politician.
But incontrovertible evidence then emerged showing that in late January 2016 McKibbin had emailed a copy of the abuse allegations to McGuinness’s spads after a meeting in which he briefed the deputy First Minister about the issue. McAteer, McGuinness’s key adviser, admitted that was true but insisted that he had never told his boss about the allegations. Regardless of whether that was the case, Sinn Féin clearly knew of the alleged abuse before it decided to delay closure.
Some senior civil servants were alarmed at the delay. DETI Deputy Secretary Eugene Rooney told McCormick that a senior finance official ‘has raised whether this announcement is consistent with what the Executive has agreed – he feels it may not be … [he] is also concerned that there will be an additional budget implication … and do we have an estimate?’ McCormick replied to say that the delay had been agreed ‘through the usual channels’ and ‘my understanding is that legitimate authority and approval exists for the announcement’.
The two-week delay would let in 298 boilers at an anticipated cost to taxpayers of £91.5 million. Part of the apparent relaxation of Stormont about the two-week extension was the belief that by now RHI had been ‘fixed’, with abuse or overcompensation no longer possible. But that was wrong. Stormont’s own analysis would later say that even after the November 2015 introduction of tiering and a cap of 400,000 kWh per boiler, the scheme was still hugely overcompensating claimants. There also had been no end to ‘gaming’ the system by installing multiple boilers in one building. The decision to allow the most lucrative tariff to apply to boilers of twice the size meant that it was now possible to install multiple 199 kW boilers and just run each of them up to the cap – meaning that tiering became almost meaningless, because individuals could get paid the top rate for all their heat.