A deal so close you can smell it? In the scandal of a Renewable Heat Incentive that subsidised the burning of fuel, Stormont collapsed, emptied out of politicians. That’s the Stormont meant to bed down the peace, to see off the Troubles.
Now the DUP and Sinn Féin may be gearing up for another Stormont, just as the public inquiry into the RHI, still months away from conclusion, unfolds in front of our eyes the almost comic debacle enabled by the last one.
This is Stormont as Fawlty Towers, with fierce competition for the role of Basil never mind Manuel. Arlene Foster headed the department that launched the scheme. There has been no sign she can claim the role of Sybil who, for all her faults, could usually restore some order amid the chaos unleashed by Basil’s loopy schemes.
Public money up in smoke, some businesses left with heavy debts; in the private sector there would have been P45s long ago, yet some civil servants have gone on to promotions.
Testimony stepped up a pace this past week, after the parade of officials almost cheerfully admitting they don’t know how they presided over such a mess - such a long, slow mess despite warning signs from various directions. This week business people added their witness. Vans with the slogan on the side; ‘20 years of free heat’, advertising leaflets making no bones about the gift that would keep on giving ‘cash for ash’. One joked that they had got rid of the leaflets: ''We were afraid of a war crimes tribunal.'' But this was a ‘government’ scheme, an entirely legal, indeed officially encouraged business enterprise.
This past week’s star was Janette O’Hagan, acknowledged as such by inquiry chair Sir Patrick Coghlin. She had wanted to stay anonymous and was plainly upset at becoming known as ‘the whistleblower’ because she tried repeatedly to alert officialdom to a glaring flaw, starting with Foster whose department launched the scheme. O’Hagan told her story plainly and well. Her business was a system to save energy. Potential clients were baffled and uninterested because a Stormont scheme was paying them to waste it.
There she was trying to promote energy efficiency as people lined up to fill their boots, some by burning round the clock with windows open. Scheme claimants were ‘using more energy than before because it pays them to do so’. People in good faith followed advice. The advice was that every day was Christmas. Eventually, after Foster wrote that she had a busy schedule, Mrs O'Hagan got a meeting with the civil servants in charge of the scheme, the ‘energy team’. When she outlined the built-in incentive to abuse one told her, 'We don't think people will do that.'
Mrs O’Hagan said she made repeated contact over two years, recognising with frustration that no action was being taken. Nothing changed. Had Deti looked into her concerns it would have been ‘blatantly obvious’ what the flaw was. A ‘blind man on a galloping horse’ would have caught on.
Eventually, when political pressure because of media exposure became unignorable, the DUP made public an early email to Foster minus the detail she provided later. Without contacting her, redacted so inefficiently that she could be identified. Deputy leader Nigel Dodds tweeted that it ‘nailed the myth’ that Foster had neglected whistleblower concerns. The department and party, said O’Hagan, made her out to be a liar. Inquiry chair Sir Patrick said her resentment was understandable.
He said she believed she was dealing solely with a department, but her email had been ‘released or spoken about by a purely political person’ from ‘a standpoint that was purely political.’ The inquiry’s senior lawyer said they would be looking at the department and its officials, noting that at this stage the relevant minister was Simon Hamilton.
All this mess while Stormont was up and running, multi-party committees questioning ministers and civil servants; so much for the arguments that we need an executive to provide effective administration. It will be a long time before anyone can listen with a straight face to DUP talk about careful management of finances.
And as for the Sinn Féin proclamation that Foster would be unacceptable as first minister until the inquiry clarified her RHI role – well, that was last year, and it was the SDLP who first demanded this inquiry anyway.
A republican apparatchik recently rewrote the origins of the civil rights movement; crudely, judgment perhaps clouded by sense of entitlement. Like DUP behaviour in the smoke of RHI.
