FIRST minister Arlene Foster has "no idea" why the botched Renewable Heat Initiative (RHI) scheme had not been stopped in 2015.
Despite stating issues with the scheme had not been raised with her, during a meeting of the enterprise, trade and investment (Deti) committee in February of this year, permanent secretary Andrew McCormick said issues had been “drawn to attention” as early as March 2015.
Mrs Foster was the minister for the department in March 2015. She did not pass control over to her DUP colleague Jonathan Bell until May 11, 2015.
"It was through them (Deti officials) identifying the issues back in March we began to notice a modest increase in applications," Mr McCormick told the committee.
"That’s when the process of thinking about this issue and asking questions of whether we were doing the right things and what needed to be done."
The permanent secretary said the issue was then "drawn to attention".
It was not until November 2015 that Jonathan Bell, then the minister for the department, announced changes to the scheme in an attempt to curb soaring costs.
What Arlene Foster said about RHI in October:
On February 5, 2016, Mr Bell announced the closure for applications to the scheme.
"To meet RHI commitments for existing installations, significant levels of additional funding will have to be found from within the NI Executive’s budget for the next five years to address the current deficit," said Mr Bell.
"To prevent further overspend I must bring forward legislation to the assembly to close both schemes to new applications."
On Thursday night's interview with Stephen Nolan, the DUP leader said she did not know why the scheme hadn’t been stopped earlier, and she did not question the delay because she was the finance minister at the time the scheme was being wound down.
She also said she had not spoken to Mr Bell in "quite some time".
Ulster Unionist Party leader Mike Nesbitt said Mrs Foster’s comments were "seriously lacking in credibility".
"Who believes a minister who introduced such a big scheme as RHI with a budget of hundreds of millions of pounds would not retain an interest in it after they moved on, especially when her next position was finance minister!" he said.
"When the permanent secretary says the issue was ‘drawn to attention’, the question must be, to whom?
"Was it to the former minister who now doesn’t know why the RHI scheme was not promptly changed to introduce cost controls and avoid gross overspend in 2015. We need full disclosure.
"As to her assertion that Mr Bell had not talked to her in some time, this is not P6 we are talking about, it is the NI Executive."
The executive office and the DUP were both contacted for comment, however last night neither had responded.
