Noah Donohoe: Department 'hadn't a clue' if tunnel was locked, inquest hears

A witness at the Noah Donohoe inquest has rejected a claim that a Stormont department "hadn't a clue" about a central issue in the case. Jonathan McKey, who is a senior official at the Department for Infrastructure (DfI), faced questions about the entrance to a culvert close to where Noah went missing in north Belfast in June 2020. A lawyer for Fiona Donohoe, Noah's mother, explained to the inquest that the teenager died after "having got access through a hatch or bars" at the culvert. Six days after Noah's disappearance, his body was found in an underground drainage system more than six hundred metres downstream from the culvert inlet which is located behind homes at Northwood Road. Questions have been raised since the boy's death about safety measures at the culvert inlet with a particular focus on whether a hatch alongside steel bars was locked. The bars were part of a debris management system. Giving evidence to the inquest on Friday, Jonathan McKee explained that it is not known for sure if there was a padlock on the hatch in the months before Noah's death. But he said: "To be fair and reasonable I think it wasn't locked." During a robust series of exchanges, the witness rejec