Debate contribution: The draft Renewable Heat Incentive Scheme (Amendment) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2024
Debate contribution by Mr David Honeyford on .
- MLA
- Mr David Honeyford
- Party at the time
- Alliance Party
- Date
- 21 October 2024
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Executive Committee Business
- Heading
- The draft Renewable Heat Incentive Scheme (Amendment) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2024
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4603658
Read the official Assembly record
Text
Thank you, Deputy Speaker. I want to set out my party's position. It is with regret that we debate this. The controversy around RHI alone warranted better engagement with the Committee and the groups that represent RHI boiler owners. "RHI": three letters that terrify some people, horrify others and, further, have left a group of people suffering financially. My concern is for those people. RHI has brought the Assembly down in the past. Not only has it left some people who honestly engaged in the scheme in debt but it left the people of the whole region without a Government for three years. Everyone suffers now from the lack of reform in Departments as a result. Let us also not forget that it helped to finish the political career of the former DUP First Minister, who was the Minister who brought us the scheme in the first place. RHI has been a disaster from the start. There have been years of failure and the suffering of many people. Where are we now as we start to look forward? Given that Alliance had no part in the design or implementation of RHI, our concern is primarily for the people caught up in the scheme. They honestly entered a government scheme and are now at financial loss. First, we are not talking about closure of the scheme, as the Committee Chair, Phillip, said.
We are looking to scrutinise the legislation, and we look forward to its coming forward in 2025. Alliance supports the closure of the RHI scheme. It needs to be closed, and we need to move on. The tariff uplift and the closure are two separate issues, but, equally, we cannot separate them because they are linked. Northern Ireland needs to move forward with renewables at the centre of our energy policy and net zero delivery. Delivering energy security is key to this region, but RHI is a failed scheme of the past. Industry and investors must be able to move into a new scheme with absolute confidence that the lessons of RHI have been learned and the debacle of RHI is firmly behind us. Without its closure, we cannot access the UK renewables energy fund. The development of a new energy scheme will be critical to delivering our legal and moral climate obligations. I have raised in Committee many times the need for the scheme to include energy that is generated by small wind sources. I clearly put on record Alliance's position while the Minister is here with us: we have an all-island energy market, and the entry point for any new scheme that we move into must be the same as that in the South. We cannot disadvantage investment in Northern Ireland. I urge the Minister to look at that again in the Department. Alliance will keep lobbying for the same generation levels and standards, North and South, for the benefit of all of us. We share this island. Alliance believes in enhancing North/South cooperation for the betterment of everyone across it. The second, and equal, issue is that of the rate. We must recognise that many people engaged in the RHI scheme legitimately and in good faith. I have said that my concern is for them. They deserve a fair rate for the scheme's lifespan. The place for scrutiny was the Committee for the Economy. The information that came to the Committee was, at best, limited and lacking. It felt as though we were trying to draw blood out of a stone.
No problem. Thank you for the intervention. It has felt like we have been trying to draw blood out of a stone: information has been withheld, we have been given as little detail as possible, and there have been deflective and evasive answers. It has felt as though there is a fear of answering questions, and that we have not been given the information that we asked for to make a judgement. It is hard to build trust when it feels like the information that you are asking for is being withheld, you are being given different answers to the same questions at different times or you sense that you are simply not being given a straightforward answer or an answer that is in language that you can clarify simply. When I left the Committee two weeks ago, I was not in a position to be able to support the proposal, or to recommend to the party that it should do so, but I have continued to work outside of the Committee to try to get answers and get to a place where I can recommend a direction of travel. My gut, and part of the Alliance Party's DNA, is to support and work with any Minister for the betterment of all of us. That is the place that I come from, and from which I want to start to work through the process. I have said many times that this place works best when we work together, but we are not getting information —.
I will continue after Question Time.
846 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Assessment
Jev’s structured answers met the documented threshold for “not flagged”.
- Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.06 (flagging needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not flagged).
- None of the five culture-war criteria was met (each was below 0.60).
- Assessed as legitimate policy scrutiny (0.91).
- No identity-based framing was identified (1.00).
- The overall probability was at or below the not-flagging threshold.
This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.
Jev’s structured answers
| Question | Probability | Met? |
|---|---|---|
| Identity framing | 0.05 | No |
| Sectarian or communal antagonism | 0.03 | No |
| Cultural grievance politics | 0.02 | No |
| Dog-whistle messaging | 0.04 | No |
| Controversy escalation | 0.06 | No |
| Legitimate policy scrutiny | 0.91 | Yes |
| Overall judgement | 0.06 | At or below not-flagging threshold |
| Option | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-based framing (chosen) | 1.00 |
| Reports or questions it | 0.00 |
| Criticises or condemns it | 0.00 |
| Adopts it | 0.00 |
| Subject | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-related subject | 0.84 |
| Constitutional question, Brexit, the Windsor Framework and sovereignty | 0.10 |
| Sectarianism, hate crime and community relations | 0.03 |
| Another identity-related subject | 0.03 |
| Flags, emblems, symbols, names and memorials | 0.00 |
Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:25 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.
Disagree with this assessment?
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