Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
RHI INQUIRY
Errors but no corruption
A CATALOGUE of errors and omissions led to Stormont’s cash-for-ash scandal not political corruption, a public inquiry found.
It made some criticism of First Minister Arlene Foster’s role in developing the ill-fated Renewable Heat Incentive scheme and also highlighted “unacceptable behaviour” by several of her party’s special advisers.
But the probe, chaired by retired judge Sir Patrick Coghlin, said it would be wrong to blame specific individuals or groups for the design flaws that saw applicants “perversely incentivised” to burn excess heat to turn a profit.
He claimed responsibility should be shared among a wide range of people and public bodies.
The report was particularly critical of the Stormont department in charge of the scheme, the then-named Department for Enterprise, Trade and investment.
Sir Patrick said: “Corrupt or malicious activity on the part of officials, ministers or special advisers was not the cause of what went wrong with the RHI scheme, albeit the inquiry has identified some instances where behaviour was unacceptable.
“Rather the vast majority of what went wrong was due to an accumulation and compounding of error and omissions over time and a failure of attention, on the part of all those involved in their differing roles to identify the existence, significance or implications of those errors and omissions.
“Responsibility for what went wrong lay not just with one individual or group but with a broad range of persons and organisations involved, across a variety of areas relating to the design, approval, management and administration of the RHI scheme through its life.”
The 656-page three-volume report contains 319 findings and makes 44 recommendations aimed at addressing the litany of failures identified by the investigation which began in 2017.
The RHI incentivised businesses and farmers to switch to eco-friendly boilers by paying them a subsidy for the wood pellet fuel required to run them.
But mistakes in its designs saw the subsidy rates set higher than the actual cost of the pellets – with applicants finding themselves able to burn to earn.
The controversy over the RHI scheme led to the collapse of Stormont power-sharing after the late Sinn Fein Deputy First Minister Martin
Mcguinness resigned in protest at Mrs Foster’s handling of the affair in January 2017. The initiative had left the administration facing an overspend bill of hundreds of millions of pounds.
Subsequent cost-control steps have prevented that happening. The report said it could give no guarantee the same mistakes will not be repeated.
The inquiry said the RHI scheme was a “project too far” for the Northern Ireland Executive.
Sir Patrick added: “While motivated by the laudable aim of encouraging the use of renewables rather than fossil fuels in heat production, the Northern Ireland stand-alone scheme should never have been adopted.”
The chairman rejected criticism of the publication date and time – on a Friday afternoon before the St Patrick’s Day holiday weekend – and insisted it was not an attempt to bury bad news.
Mrs Foster was the DETI minister at the time the scheme was developed in 2012. The inquiry found she had been incorrectly informed by her officials the project was value for money.
However, it criticised her for signing off on a draft regulatory impact assessment which highlighted risk but didn’t include adequate costs information.
The inquiry also highlighted concerns about Mrs Foster’s working arrangements with her then special adviser Dr Andrew Crawford – particularly in respect of his role analysing key documents.
The report identified instances of “unacceptable behaviour” by Dr Crawford and other DUP advisers, including the party’s current press office director John Robinson.
It criticised Dr Crawford for sharing confidential documents relating to the scheme to family members.
It criticised Mr Robinson for leaking emails relating to the involvement of civil servants in the scheme in order to “divert the attention of the media away from their party”.
The inquiry noted that a plan had been also been discussed with one of Mrs Foster’s successors as DETI minister, Simon Hamilton, and other party advisers. The report said the department should never have embarked on the scheme and criticised the decision to diverge from the model employed in Britain.
Sir Patrick added: “The potentially lucrative nature of the scheme was promoted by many in the private sector and brought to the attention of a number of public sector bodies.
“There was certainly no ‘conspiracy of silence’ in this regard.”
TUV leader Jim Allister said of the investigation: “While the Coghlin report deploys neutral language, it is clear the panel was appalled by much of what they encountered, leading to a key conclusion that Stormont was not fit to manage the RHI scheme.”
Ulster Unionist Robbie Butler added: “We need to show maturity, that we are going to learn from what is in these documents, and that we will be brave in taking steps to ensure that a failure of these proportions does not happen again.”