Court grants full appeal to local boiler owners over payment cuts
BOILER owners facing reduced RHI payments following a court ruling are to have their appeal heard in full next year, it was confirmed yesterday.
Senior judges had raised the possibility of a narrow re-examination of the case focused on the flawed scheme’s cost over just one year.
But proceedings will instead be widened out to all areas of dispute about the potential bill for a 20-year period.
Lord Chief Justice Sir Declan Morgan listed the challenge for a two-day hearing in February.
He told parties in the Court of Appeal: “Both of you, despite encouragement you may have got from the bench, are quite content to have a go at everything.
“It’s your case, not ours. Therefore, you should be allowed to have a go at everything and we will just hear the appeal.”
More than 500 members of the Renewable Heat Association NI Ltd are challenging the Department of the Economy for cutting their tariff rates.
They claim it was an unlawful step taken against operators with a cast-iron, 20-year guaranteed rate of return on their investments.
Set up to encourage businesses and other non-domestic users to move to green energy systems, the scheme was plunged into controversy after the potential cost to taxpayers emerged.
With operators legitimately able to earn more cash the more fuel they burned, the bill was projected at up to £490m — a figure fiercely disputed by the association.
According to its lawyers, the overspend could end up being as low as £60m.
However, the department responded by claiming the cost could actually have reached £700m without the new cost controls.
Last December, a High Court judge identified a clash between the private interests of the boiler owners and the public interest asserted by the department.
He ruled that introducing the capped tariffs did not represent an abuse of power.