The vast cost of the renewable wind turbine scheme is all the more scandalous amid a ruinously expensive pandemic

After all, the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) controversy dominated our news and politics for years.

It was even cited by Sinn Fein in their collapse of Stormont (although the party’s unwavering demand for an Irish language act showed that they had other political priorities).

‘Cash for ash’ was a political, administrative and environmental fiasco that was rightly the subject of a public inquiry.

Yet here we are again, this time in relation to wind turbines, in a scandal that has many of the same hallmarks.

First, in that it reveals a grasping attitude to UK taxpayer money that is logical for a republican who wants to create tensions between Northern Ireland and London but ought to be spurned, indeed viewed with contempt, by everyone else.

Second, in that it is an environmental project which in fact appears to be largely about maximising extraction of public cash (by utilising the most profitable wind turbines rather than the most energy efficient ones).

Third, in that it exposes a deplorable lack of curiosity by decision makers and a real failure to seek value for money. Also, in that it raises questions as to who has benefited and how.

This has all happened as wind turbines have proliferated everywhere in Northern Ireland, often intruding on someone’s enjoyment of their adjacent property.

We cannot let fatigue with incompetence or other pressing concerns allow this latest scandal to fade into the past.

Northern Ireland needs at the very least a Public Accounts Committee inquiry at Stormont into this affair. We also need to know if there is any way legally to curb or retrieve some of the vast future expenditure, which seems all the more scandalous at a time of a financially ruinous health emergency.

And we need transparency as to the beneficiaries of what should have been a clean wind energy scheme and looks for some individuals or companies more like a windfall one.

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