RHI Scandal: DUP manages to pass radical cost-control legislation

The emergency legislation, which was the subject of a legal threat before it had even entered the Assembly chamber last week, is almost certain to be judicially reviewed by some of then RHI claimants who stand to lose around £30 million over the next year if the law stands.

But the wariness of the other parties about backing DUP Economy Minister Simon Hamilton’s sudden plan did not extend to taking the move of voting it down in the mouth of a snap Assembly election.

The DUP’s MLAs managed to pass the draft Renewable Heat Incentive Scheme (Amendment) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2017 despite innumerable questions and objections from other parties during a protracted debate because – highly unusually – every other party abstained in what was an oral vote.

In a final appeal to MLAs to back his proposals, Mr Hamilton said: “The House can support the regulations, or it can permit up to £30 million to be lost to the Northern Ireland Budget next year. I hope members view the regulations in that context and support them.”

The regulations – which take effect from April – will cover just a 12-month period and during that time Mr Hamilton, or his successor after the election, will have to bring forward a more substantive piece of legislation to address the costs of the scheme.

DUP MLAs have repeatedly claimed that they can cut the scheme’s losses to “zero”.

But with the scheme costing local public services the equivalent of £85,000 a day, around £30 million has already gone since a whistleblower went to Arlene Foster and Martin McGuinness’s department a year ago to warn about abuse in the scheme.

Even Mr Hamilton’s regulations will not recoup any of that money although if any of it has been claimed fraudulently it could be recovered by other means.

Earlier, Mr Hamilton had accused Sinn Fein Finance Minister Máirtín Ó Muilleoir of “illustrating, once again, his flair for the dramatic” when he did not attend the bulk of the Assembly debate but arrived at the end to say “I would like to be more helpful tonight, but we are not there just yet”, citing the lack of EU State Aid approval.

During a detailed debate, both People Before Profit’s Eamonn McCann and the TUV leader Jim Allister highlighted the role of the media – including the News Letter and BBC Spotlight – in bringing political focus to a scandal about which the DUP and Sinn Fein have been aware for around a year.

Mr McCann said: “We would not have been here, as someone remarked, if it had not been for honest, investigative journalism in this part of the world. Everybody would be trundling on in a complacent manner.”

But the DUP’s Paul Frew claimed that the media had “ridiculed, slammed and smeared” legitimate businesses claiming under the RHI scheme, adding: “I tell you now: the media have a lot to answer for in this regard.”

The North Antrim MLA went on: “Let us look at the sensationalism in our media, let us look at the drip-feeding that we have experienced over the last number of weeks and let us look at the agendas of media.”