A senior Northern Ireland civil servant has alleged that the DUP’s chief executive, Timothy Johnston, was involved in delaying a cap being put on the botched renewable heat incentive (RHI) scheme.
Dr Andrew McCormick, in a written statement to the inquiry into the RHI, said a then DUP special adviser, Timothy Cairns, told him that in the summer of 2015 Mr Johnston had been involved in the delay in the tariff reduction.
The RHI scheme was established in 2012 and run by the North’s Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment when DUP leader Arlene Foster was its minister.
The subsidised non-domestic element of the scheme was designed to encourage businesses and farmers to switch from fossil-fuel heating systems to more environmentally friendly wood-burning boilers.
However, unlike a system in Britain, there was no cap on the Northern scheme which created an impetus on participants to “burn to earn” and led to the scheme being dubbed “cash for ash”. The Northern Ireland taxpayer could ultimately be liable for a bill of up to £490 million (€540 million) as a result.
Spike of applications
There were official attempts to close the scheme in September 2015 but the actual cost-control corrections were not put in place until November of that year.
In the three months between September and November there was a spike of almost 1,000 applications which will greatly add to the overall cost of the scheme. A total of 1,946 applicants were approved for the RHI scheme.
Dr McCormick was permanent secretary of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Industry (DETI) at this period.
His written evidence referred to how the then DUP minister at the department, Jonathan Bell, had alleged that Mr Johnston, then the DUP special adviser to Ms Foster, had wanted to delay capping the scheme.
In December 2016, Mr Bell in an interview with Stephen Nolan of the BBC claimed that two DUP special advisers, Mr Johnston and Dr Andrew Crawford, sought to keep the RHI scheme open against his wishes.
Dr McCormick said around that time within the DUP there was a “conspicuous degree of concern about the fact that Jonathan Bell had referred to Timothy Johnston’s involvement in the delay in the tariff reduction”.
Challenge claims
Mr Johnston and Dr Crawford are expected to challenge these claims when they appear before the inquiry.
Dr McCormick, when giving oral evidence on Tuesday, said that when he took over as permanent secretary of DETI in July 2014 that apart from a standard briefing that included mention of the RHI, no concerns were expressed about the scheme.
He said businesswoman and whistleblower Janette O’Hagan had made a number of warnings about the scheme to the department between 2013 and 2015 before he was appointed, but that remedial action was not taken.
“[Concerns about RHI] should not just have been in my brief but should have been acted on before I arrived,” he said.“The baton was dropped...We have to hold our hands up to many mistakes at official level in the way the scheme was constructed.”
Dr McCormick said when appointed he had no expertise in the energy area. He agreed with the tribunal panel that he “placed reliance” on the overall civil service system working to avoid such failures.
He said lessons had since been learned and that the risk and scale of projects now were carefully examined.
