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ANALYSIS: £1.2bn goes up in smoke and nobody is accountable

The Renewable Heat Incentive could cost Stormont up to £1.2bn
The Renewable Heat Incentive could cost Stormont up to £1.2bn The Renewable Heat Incentive could cost Stormont up to £1.2bn

ARLENE Foster may be tempted to delay her return from China rather than arrive back in the midst of the media firestorm surrounding the botched Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI). While minister at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment, the DUP leader oversaw the introduction of the scheme and its subsequent development into a massive overspend headache for the Stormont executive.

There's normally an assumption in politics that the buck stops with the minister but this isn't the case at Stormont. In an interview with The Irish News in October she denied responsibility for its shortcomings and shifted responsibility to department officials.

She insists that when problems were highlighted by whistleblowers, she passed those concerns on. However, despite her apparent intervention, the problems persisted and it was only after Mrs Foster had left the department that the scheme was closed.

The DUP leader's abdication of responsibility is quite rightly viewed in some quarters as unacceptable, however, a rhetorical bashing in the assembly chamber notwithstanding, the first minister appears set to escape being held accountable for her oversight of the RHI.

As revealed in The Irish News last month, unwritten Stormont conventions mean Mrs Foster will escape a grilling by the Public Accounts Committee and in all likelihood she will be spared of any blame in a inquiry whose remit is restricted to identifying whether a government department got value for money.

Arlene Foster speaking about the RHI scheme in October:

If there is to be a more thorough investigation then that will fall to Stormont's economy committee, though so far under the chairmanship of Sinn Féin's Conor Murphy it has shown little appetite for taking up the RHI cause. With Stormont's honeymoon period enduring, Sinn Féin appears to be content to walk that thin line where it voices outrage but avoids pinning blame.

So if the minister isn't accountable for overseeing a flawed scheme then surely the civil servants in charge at the time must take the rap? Er.... no.

Once again Stormont's peculiar vagaries come into play, whereby in something resembling a Gilbert & Sullivan opera, those who developed and managed the deeply flawed scheme simply move along in their civil service careers. Former Deti permanent secretary David Sterling, who only last week said he "can't satisfactorily explain" why the scheme was never reviewed, is being tipped for the vacant post at the head of the civil service, while Fiona Hepper, the former director of the department's energy division was promoted to deputy permanent secretary at the Department of Education in 2013.