In hot water

Your Editorial (“Foster should take responsibility and go”, 10 January) sets out some useful background in to the heating scheme which has caused the political crisis in Northern Ireland. The story seems to be that renewable energy schemes were being paid far too much, and ended up costing taxpayers a fortune.

The situation is not dissimilar to what we have in Scotland, where huge amounts of money are thrown at renewable schemes, to the point of people being paid not to turn them on. We too have situations where people are paid to use renewable energy, and the more they consume the better off they are. Few landowners can afford to ignore the opportunities provided by current initiatives.

The difference in Scotland is that it is energy users across the UK who pay for this through a surcharge on their bills, the payments are not coming directly out of taxation, and certainly not out of Scottish taxation.

What this means in practice is that while money is thrown at renewables here, the Scottish Parliament is not accountable for the costs involved, and hence the political scandal that has arisen in Northern Ireland could not arise here, although the basic concept is more or less the same. If Holyrood was responsible, we might well be asking for resignations as well, because we would be looking at these things a lot more closely. VICTOR CLEMENTS

Taybridge Terrace Aberfeldy, Perthshire