Bell TV interview ended Executive

the spads contest that claim. She alleged Mr Bell “pressed the nuclear button” in an interview to the BBC’S The Nolan Show about RHI.

She told the inquiry: “[Mr Bell] spoke to Nolan in a fashion that contributed to the breakdown of the Assembly.”

The DUP leader claimed her former colleague “painted himself as the victim” but this was not the case.

She said: “Jonathan had to take what was coming to him in terms of the reaction. We [the DUP and Sinn Fein] had agreed a plan to deal with this issue.”

Mrs Foster said that included an inquiry, a cost control plan, and her making a statement to the Assembly.

On December 19, 2016, MLAS from every party other than the DUP walked out of the Assembly when Mrs Foster rose to give a statement on RHI scheme.

She said Sinn Fein took a dim view of the Bell interview and withdrew from the plan to tackle the issue. She received a phone call from the deputy first minister Martin Mcguinness asking her to step aside.

She told the inquiry: “We were on a trajectory to the Assembly and Executive collapsing.”

On January 10 2017, Mr Mcguinness resigned and the Assembly folded.

Mr Bell appeared at the inquiry earlier in September and claimed the DUP was trying to “fit him up” over RHI.

Mrs Foster dismissed that, telling the inquiry that “paranoia had set in”.

Mrs Foster told the probe: “I didn’t think he acted in an appropriate way as a minister.

“He saw it as a role where he was to be served rather than to serve. With hindsight I shouldn’t have left him there, the view was expressed to me, how much harm can he do in three months.”

She also said she is accountable for her former Spad Dr Andrew Crawford, but not responsible for him.

Mrs Foster told the inquiry: “If he had committed a criminal offence as a Spad, I don’t see how the panel would be asking me to be responsible for that.”