Sir, – I am afraid that a great many people would have difficulty agreeing with Newton Emerson’s assertion that “the renewable heat incentive (RHI) scheme revealed a completely dysfunctional civil service” (”Northern Ireland, a technocracy once again”, Opinion and Analysis, December, 1st).
Perhaps, the most significant revelation arising from the RHI Inquiry report was that Arlene Foster, as the responsible minister for trade, enterprise and investment, had not even bothered to read the legislation which implemented the scheme.
Like most things in Northern Ireland, dysfunctionality is inevitably a shared experience.
Again, it is difficult to understand how your columnist can talk so positively about the “successes” of the “true technocrats” in relation to housing policy in NI and the regeneration of the city of Derry. While the postwar public housing programme may have produced more houses, it certainly did not benefit the nationalist population who had to take to the streets to protest against discrimination. I am reminded of the postwar prefabs which were built in Ballymurphy, as a sort of clearing house for thousands of Catholic families in Belfast and this type of sub-standard accommodation remained in place until the completion of a rebuilding programme in the 1970s.
Regarding the regeneration of Derry, it has always been hindered by the decision by the then Stormont government in the late 1960s to establish NI’s second university in Coleraine rather than in Derry and the work did not make any real progress until gerrymandering disappeared and powersharing gradually became a reality. – Yours, etc,
MARTIN McDONALD,
Terenure,
Dublin 12.