by Sam McBride
Both the spad and she [Foster] described it as a Sinn Féin project, that it had little or no tourism benefits. I explained the background to the project, in terms of the Western Perspective, the combination of the Apprentice Boys and the Museum of Free Derry and public realm space between. It was explained that the Museum of Free Derry had gone through all requisite board approval … again the minister and the spad described this as a Sinn Féin project and considered that, while the Apprentice Boys had ‘history’, the Museum of Free Derry had not.
About a month later, BBC business correspondent Julian O’Neill had – from reading tourist board minutes – picked up on the board’s concern at Stormont’s pressure to cut advertising spending. He made inquiries and filed a report which said that the board had lobbied Foster to urge a rethink because the cuts may lead to it losing its targets for visitor numbers. On 30 August 2013, Clarke recorded another ‘file note’ to say that Crawford had phoned him the previous evening at about 7pm.
He was extremely aggressive that we had not copied in himself when we issued the statement to [BBC journalist] Julian O’Neill, which I accepted re the DETI press office, but [he] kept asking why this had not been done and was it either incompetence or were we deliberately attempting to undermine the minister. I repeatedly said that we never had any intention to undermine the minister. He also cited that [sic] Duffy Rafferty [advertising agency] in the conversation and had they been involved in the issue – I clarified that they definitely had not. He said he would come back to this later due to the substantial money we were paying them. He said he was off to see the minister re this issue, that she was already angry about it and that he would ‘deal with this’. I clarified that Julian O’Neill had said that he would put in an FoI request if he was not given the information and that we had tried to control the situation. He said that any FoI request could be put on the long finger and that Julian O’Neill had phoned him five times the previous week which he had ignored.
Significantly, another ‘file note’ prepared by Clarke appears to implicate David Sterling – now the head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service – in the fallout from that incident. Clarke had explained to Sterling that the issue had not been leaked to the BBC, as Crawford seemed to believe to have happened, but had been picked up by the journalist after reading the minutes of a NITB board meeting. Clarke’s note of their conversation on 30 August 2013 said: ‘David said he felt that this was more a cock up than conspiracy [and] that he would speak to the [NITB] chairman regarding … the nature of our board minutes.’ When asked about Clarke’s comments, Sterling said he did not remember the conversation or the issue ‘so I cannot comment in detail’. He added: ‘I would however refute any suggestion that I was involved in any moves to “water down” the minutes of the Northern Ireland Tourist Board (NITB) either generally or specifically. The minutes of NITB board meetings were a matter for the board. The department had no role in their scrutiny or approval.’
A 29 August note by Clarke said that in a voicemail from Crawford the previous day at 5.09pm the spad had said:
Alan I understand that you folks have went [sic] and briefed the media against the department and against the minister … you haven’t cc’d myself in but that’s no surprise; you never do that. A very cross minister on the phone, she [sic] looking an answer from me which I can’t answer and I need to answer the questions as soon as possible.
Crawford, the note said, had gone on to demand that Clarke contact him as ‘a matter of urgency’ because the minister may give an interview in which ‘I suspect she will not be very complimentary about the NITB’, adding: ‘I expect a response back very quickly.’ Clarke said that he was ‘not remotely nationalist’ – and had striven to be politically neutral in his role – but had been accused by Crawford of being ‘SDLP, nationalist, whatever else’ because some of what the NITB was doing did not meet with his approval.
At a valedictory media lunch just before his retirement, Clarke spoke about what he said had always been a ‘very difficult relationship’ with Tourism Ireland, the cross-border body responsible for promoting the island of Ireland abroad. He told the press that Tourism Ireland was not doing enough to promote Northern Ireland. But although he said that Foster also shared his view, Crawford was ‘hopping mad’ because it showed that ‘Andrew couldn’t control me’. When Clarke’s comments were put to Foster and Crawford, they declined to directly comment on them but responded with a joint solicitor’s letter which threatened to sue the author and the publisher ‘in the event that publication of inaccurate and defamatory material occurs’.
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At the heart of Foster’s disastrous response to the RHI scandal when it erupted was her failure to accept personal responsibility – despite having wanted to take personal credit for the scheme when she thought it was a success. That contrasted with how some officials – and even some political figures, such as Tim Cairns – had freely admitted their individual failures. One such official was Elaine Dolan, who was head of the internal audit in Foster’s department when RHI was designed. She accepted that an auditor working under her had not done enough to query what officials were telling him. Although the auditor was not one of her staff, with the work having been subcontracted to accountants ASM, and although his report had not come to her directly but had been checked by another individual, Dolan accepted ultimate responsibility. Dame Una O’Brien thanked her for ‘taking responsibility … they’re perhaps words we hear too infrequently so far in this inquiry’.
By contrast, Foster was keen to apportion blame to others whom she said had failed her, but insisted that she did nothing wrong. At the start of her evidence, David Scoffield QC began by asking ‘a question with which many of the public may be concerned, and it’s this: are there any of the mistakes or errors in relation to the RHI scheme, which you’ve identified for which you bear any measure of personal responsibility?’ In a rambling answer which did not answer the question, Foster was prepared to say that ‘the way in which the RHI scheme has brought it to this place is a matter of deep regret for me, politically and personally’. She went on to say enigmatically: ‘There will be known unknowns and unknown unknowns but certainly there seems to be a lot of unknown unknowns.’ Scoffield asked her again as to whether she felt she bore any personal responsibility. He said that she seemed to be saying that with hindsight there were several things she would do differently but at the time she did not do anything which was wrong. Foster replied: ‘That’s correct. Yes, that is my position.’ Pressed by the inquiry’s technical adviser, Dr Keith MacLean, to say if there were any things which she could have done or should have done, Foster said: ‘None that spring to mind at present.’
During her evidence, she spoke with remarkable imprecision about key moments in the story, repeatedly using phrases such as ‘I don’t remember’, ‘I can’t recall’ and ‘I don’t think I have any clear recollection’ about important meetings which went unminuted. The scandal also exposed a lack of candour by the DUP leader. On the night of the Nolan interview on 15 December 2016, she was asked in writing if she had ‘any knowledge or concerns that any members or associates of the DUP or members of their family have benefited from the RHI scheme’. She responded that she had no knowledge of who was a claimant, saying ‘I have no knowledge of who is on the list’. Yet it is now clear that she was at least aware of her spad Stephen Brimstone being on the list, as well as being aware of Crawford’s relatives. The scandal also exposed Foster as frequently incapable of striking the right tone. Where a cannier politician would have presented contrition, Foster – even when attempting to do so, at the advice of those around her – managed to sound bullish and aggressive. In September 2018, after the inquiry had exposed myriad DUP secrets and dysfunctionalities, DUP MLA Paul Frew candidly accepted that it had damaged the DUP. Striking a very different tone to that of Foster and other party colleagues, the North Antrim MLA told BBC politics programme The View that the inquiry’s revelations di
d not reflect well on the DUP, and he was ‘very concerned’ but he believed that at the end of the inquiry there would be ‘better government – and that’s a good thing’.
CHAPTER 27
THE LEGACY
Since 1921, when Northern Ireland was pragmatically carved out of the rest of the island of Ireland – as Britain’s attempt to solve ‘the Irish question’ – Irish republicans have argued that it could not work and would not work. Only Irish reunification would solve the ills of the states on both sides of the border, they argued. In at least one respect, they were wrong – the new northern state would survive for 100 years, despite their expectations and efforts, often involving violence, to the contrary.
Despite the fact that the one metric used to determine Northern Ireland’s borders had been the number of Protestants who would be within the new UK region, even radically changed demographics, which had brought the Catholic–Protestant split almost level, had not led to any great surge in support for Irish unity. On the contrary, by 2016, with Northern Ireland still constitutionally within the UK but with an increased Irish dimension and enforced power-sharing between unionists and nationalists, polls had consistently shown record levels of support for the constitutional status quo.
That was shaken in June 2016 when the UK voted to leave the EU, despite the fact that Northern Ireland voted to remain. Nationalists were discombobulated by a sense that they were not in control of their destiny. The plebiscite demonstrated how forces in England could alter the course of life in Northern Ireland in a way which had practical and psychological implications for them. But although Sinn Féin responded to Brexit by renewing its call for an Irish unity referendum, it did not seem to contemplate toppling Stormont. Despite being on opposite sides of the Brexit argument, Arlene Foster and Martin McGuinness were able to write a joint letter to the Prime Minister setting out their practical priorities for the Brexit process. It was against that backdrop that the RHI scandal emerged. The revelations in December 2016 were met with dismay and anger from unionists and nationalists alike. But over time the narrative shifted subtly in a way which could have constitutional implications for years to come.
For decades, unionists in Northern Ireland looked south and scoffed at what they saw as an endemically corrupt political establishment. From brown envelopes for councillors corruptly nodding through planning applications, to the crooked Taoiseach Charlie Haughey, it was a society most unionists looked on with a disdain and reinforced their constitutional preference to remain British.
But with a booming southern economy and with the Republic perceived as a place with a modern outlook, RHI has contributed to at least a partial reversal of that image: now it is Northern Ireland that to many people looks shady. Cash for ash was not the first Stormont scandal. There had been Red Sky, NAMA, SIF, expenses and myriad others. Though there are many honourable DUP members, far too many of the scandals involved DUP figures. Together, they had sapped public confidence in a system where there seemed to be a culture of impunity – although conversely voters generally did not seem to punish those whose conduct angered them.
Often a profound issue is understood through an anecdote. For many people, their vague sense that Stormont was broken came to be encapsulated in the story of RHI. Some people would take from the tale that those running the system were so incompetent that they could not understand why people were piling into a scheme that paid more for heat than the cost of the fuel to generate that heat. For others, they assumed – as the public often do, and often unfairly – that there was a darker truth and corruption had to be involved. Regardless of which camp an individual fell into, their view of Stormont was severely tarnished. RHI became the prism through which ordinary people came to understand the scale and the nature of the dysfunctionality among their rulers. That in itself was powerful, because most politics never makes its way beyond the bubble of people who follow the minutiae of political debate.
Everything in life is interlinked, and RHI did not happen in a vacuum but in conjunction with Brexit, the DUP’s Líofa decision, McGuinness’s mortal illness and the collapse of Stormont. What the scandal revealed embarrassed the DUP, the civil service and, to a lesser extent, Sinn Féin. But it was unionism that was acutely vulnerable. RHI revealed a system that was freewheelingly dysfunctional. Almost three years after the scandal erupted into a political crisis, the question for unionism is whether it can confine the fallout from this to Arlene Foster, or to the DUP, or to the civil service, or to the devolved Stormont system – or whether it persuades some people that Northern Ireland itself is unsustainable as an entity.
The scandal revealed critical deficiencies in four areas, which have constitutional implications. Firstly, the civil service was shown to be populated by generalists, who were hopelessly out of their depth in dealing with RHI. That use of generalists was not in itself an accident or failure; it was by design. Some of that is tied to the size of Northern Ireland and whether a region of 1.8 million people can sustain the expertise necessary for running a devolved government with the powers of Stormont. If not, the entire devolution settlement may have to be reassessed, with knock-on implications for public support for the constitutional status quo.
Secondly, the scale of the incompetence within the Northern Ireland Civil Service has led to the first-ever calls from a senior politician, Arlene Foster, for consideration to be given to ending its historic independence from Whitehall and subsuming it into the Home Civil Service, with power residing in London. Such a development is unlikely to happen, not least because it would seem to nationalists to be a move against the spirit of devolution, but the very fact that it is being raised demonstrates how old certainties have been shaken by RHI. However, civil servants can be wily creatures able to find alternative means of achieving the same goal. In January 2018, there was surprise when it was announced that Sue Gray, the right-hand aide to the Cabinet Secretary, was moving to Belfast – not to take over as head of the Stormont civil service, but as permanent secretary in the Department of Finance. It was a curious move for a figure described in London as ‘the most powerful civil servant you’ve never heard of’. There had been dismay at a senior level in Whitehall as mandarins read reports of what was emerging from the RHI Inquiry. Whether by accident or design, Gray’s move to Belfast meant that Whitehall had the heart of the Northern Ireland Civil Service a figure it trusted – and someone who immediately set about reforming Stormont’s bureaucracy.
Thirdly, although the scandal has been largely missed in the rest of the UK, it has revealed a crudely grasping attitude of some senior figures in Stormont, which has the potential to undermine support for Northern Ireland on the British mainland. The unedifying picture of a greedy culture of ‘get whatever we can, regardless of the consequences’ undermines the image unionist politicians, such as Foster, have sought to portray of deep care for the entire Union. The scandal is likely to have immediate implications for the next time Stormont’s politicians go to the Treasury with a begging bowl asking for more money. And at some point, if middle England realises it is paying for these sorts of scandals, there will be a day of reckoning.
Fourthly, the timing of the scandal undermined unionism. At a point when Brexit had already angered many nationalists, and the centenary of Northern Ireland was around the corner, RHI – made in a unionist ministry and disastrously dealt with by the leader of unionism – was calamitous for the ideology of which she was the leader. The snap election called, as a result of Foster’s refusal to stand aside, saw unionism lose its Stormont majority for the first time in almost 100 years. But perhaps, more significant than that, it breathed life into the narrative that Stormont can never work and only Irish unity is the answer – even though there is still no hint of a majority for removing the Irish border. The timing of the scandal came just four years before Northern Ireland’s centenary – a rare moment at which even those with scant interest in politics are more likely to reflect on the constitutional question. In 2021, when
allegiances will be pondered, and in some cases reassessed, RHI will be fresh in the memory. Prior to Brexit and RHI, polling pointed to the likelihood that many Catholic voters might think: one hundred years on, our position has been transformed, we feel comfortable and treated fairly within Northern Ireland.
Now, amid an increasingly tribalised political landscape, the uncertainty of Brexit and the RHI Inquiry’s revelation of incompetence across a swathe of the machinery of government, there is an acute danger for unionism that in 2021 a section of Catholics who could have been persuaded of the Union’s merits instead say: we gave this 100 years and it is just a failed state. In that regard, what senior DUP figures such as Foster have done with RHI has been recklessly detrimental to that which they say they cherish above all else: the Union. Regardless of Northern Ireland’s constitutional future, it will have to be governed – and in all likelihood even a united Ireland would involve a regional Stormont administration. Therefore, irrespective of constitutional aspiration, it should be in the interests of both unionism and nationalism to rectify the faults exposed by RHI. This scandal saw huge sums of public money squandered, brought down a government, involved reprehensible behaviour by some of those charged with serving the people of Northern Ireland, caused financial pain for individuals and trashed Northern Ireland’s reputation. But it also exposed to the light practices which will be difficult to continue if devolution is restored. If the scale of this scandal convinces all sides of the imperative to change – and if Stormont can be reformed as an open, responsive and competent institution – then cash for ash may be remembered as the darkness just before the dawn of a new age.