The Renewable Heat Incentive report should resonate beyond Northern Ireland

You wait three years for the report on the fiasco that brought down the Northern Ireland executive – and it lands in the middle of the biggest public health crisis for a century. Surely the chair of the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) public inquiry, Sir Patrick Coghlin, and his team can hardly have expected his report to have been quite so overshadowed.

But overshadowed or not, they have diligently compiled a blockbuster 656-page report on what went wrong with the RHI scheme, which triggered the collapse of the executive in 2017 and ended up presenting taxpayers with a huge bill. The scheme, as originally devised, had a projected overspend on £700m over its 20-year lifetime by the time it was closed to new participants.  

Many of the report’s recommendations for improved governance in NI are already in train – but need to happen this time

The report draws attention to a lot of structural problems in the governance of Northern Ireland. These include the siloed departments in the coalitions required under the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, and a lack of effective scrutiny by the assembly.

It calls for reinforcement of the Northern Ireland ministerial code and more clarity on the role of special advisers – stressing that it is ministers who must make final decisions, in response to findings that too many on the RHI scheme appeared to be taken by advisers. It also covers the breakdown of normal record-keeping by the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS). It found that too many decisions went unrecorded as a symptom of civil servants’ focus on keeping the often-fragile executive functioning, sometimes to the detriment of accountable decision making.

Many of the recommendations in the report have already been picked up in the 2020 New Decade, New Approach agreement, which allowed for the re-establishment of the executive in January. But past recommendations for reform in Northern Ireland have not been acted on: the challenge this time is to ensure they result in real change to government practice.

The report highlights the lack of policy and implementation capacity in Northern Ireland

The most damning comment in the report is that RHI was a project “too far” for a small administration with a wide range of powers but limited capacity. While Scotland and Wales decided to opt into the scheme developed by the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change, Northern Ireland wanted a bespoke programme.

NI ministers and officials also thought that RHI should be fully funded by the UK taxpayer. They rejected plans from consultants that offered better value for money because they would have required some administration spending out of the NI budget. One big lesson is that Northern Ireland’s ministers should be much more willing to take a realistic view on what they can and should do differently from the rest of the UK.

But it of course comes at a time when the executive is stretched to capacity – not just having to cope with business as normal (massively disrupted by the burden of dealing with coronavirus) but also addressing the crises in public services created by the three-year absence of ministers. At the same time, the Northern Ireland protocol will introduce enforced divergence from the rest of GB, increasing the need for NI-specific policy solutions. 

The UK government needs to recognise the burden that places on the NI government and make sure it has the assistance it requires. The UK, after all, remains responsible for the successful implementation of the protocol.

Policy makers everywhere should learn the wider lessons from the RHI fiasco

Among its key findings, the report found:

• Generalist NI civil servants struggled with the details of a highly complicated scheme; and failed to identify and challenge errors in proposals produced by consultants to whom they outsourced policy design.
• When the scheme was up and running, there was staff churn and handovers were poorly managed.
• Officials failed to react to emerging external evidence that the scheme was being abused – and to specific claims raised by a whistleblower who repeatedly got in touch with RHI officials. The report recommends that all policy makers ensure their systems are robust enough to prevent similar problems emerging.

Moreover the report highlights ministerial and special adviser failings – not least the lack of care they took over decisions. Arlene Foster, the minister in charge when the scheme was introduced, signed off the scheme without reading the legislation or querying the lack of costing. The report suggests that both ministers and special advisers need proper inductions to prepare themselves for their roles; something the Institute for Government has been proposing since it was founded.

It is too easy to look at the RHI report and think “only in Northern Ireland”. But many of the problems highlighted are far from unique to Stormont. Over the coming months, policy makers across the UK – ministerial and officials – should read the report and ask themselves honestly whether their processes are strong enough to prevent another RHI on their watch.