Debate contribution: RHI Inquiry Recommendations: Implementation

Debate contribution by Mr Matthew O'Toole on 5 November 2024.

MLA

Mr Matthew O'Toole

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

5 November 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

RHI Inquiry Recommendations: Implementation

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4631994

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I beg to move

Thank you, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Audit Office's update report on the implementation of recommendations from the RHI inquiry and on the broader subject of improved accountability and, indeed, reform of Stormont and its institutions. When I became an MLA in early 2020, the institutions had been collapsed for three years. In large part, although not exclusively, that was a consequence of the RHI debacle, in which large amounts of public money were put at risk; severe failures in governance, transparency, accountability and Civil Service performance were exposed; and public trust in our institutions was disastrously compromised. Just a couple of months after I became an MLA and just as the COVID pandemic was breaking out, upstairs in Parliament Buildings, Sir Patrick Coghlin, a retired judge, presented his findings in a very long document, 'The Report of the Independent Public Inquiry into the Non-domestic Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) Scheme'. He found that there had been multiple failures at official and political levels. At that time, the institutions had just been re-established. We were told that we would have a new decade and a new approach. We are now halfway through that decade. The new approach that we were promised was a systems change in government performance, a more fit-for-purpose and professional Civil Service and an overhaul of accountability and transparency at Stormont. Now that we are halfway through that decade and have just had an update report from the Audit Office on delivery against those inquiry targets, it is an apposite moment for the Assembly to reflect on progress that has or, as might be the case, has not been made against those targets and recommendations and also to reflect on how well we have been doing on the connected challenges of accountability and reform.

I intend to touch on not only the NIAO report but broader questions of accountability, reform and good governance. Five years into the new decade that we were promised in 2020, and nine months into the term of the restored Executive, it is remarkably better that we have a functioning Executive and Assembly, but, clearly, that, by itself, is not sufficient to deliver good governance. We need to be robust and honest about where we have, and have not, made progress. I will start with the findings of the NIAO report. It is clear that most of the recommendations of the Coghlin report from the RHI inquiry, which cost millions of pounds of public money and consumed huge amounts of energy, have either been implemented or are being implemented. However, underneath that headline finding, we see a more concerning picture. The NIAO report says:

"almost forty per cent of the Inquiry's findings have not yet been fully implemented."

Nearly half of the key recommendations of the Coghlin report have not been fully implemented. Of those, there are five recommendations where the NIAO finds that the planned actions that the Department of Finance and the Civil Service have undertaken to complete will not meet the conclusions and recommendations of Sir Patrick Coghlin. Perhaps more startling is that the Executive subcommittee that was established to implement those reforms and, indeed, deal with the broader questions of Stormont reform and Civil Service reform has not met in four years. Four years. That says a lot about the commitment of the Executive that was created in 2020. Before others pull me up on it, there was an SDLP Minister in that Executive, so there is a degree of collective responsibility, but I hope that colleagues from other parties will be as fulsome and mature as the Opposition have been in taking responsibility for their parties' role in improving how we do things. Those are stark findings. The report provides a fairly damning assessment of the Executive's seriousness about continuing the work of delivering good governance and delivering on the recommendations of the RHI inquiry report. That bleak picture has been painted. The RHI scheme has become synonymous with poor governance, poor financial management, mismanagement and lack of accountability and transparency here at Stormont. Therefore, it is incumbent on us all to do what we can to prove to the public who sent us here that we mean what we say when we say — people do say — that we are committed to a new approach and to improving accountability and transparency here. We need to redouble our efforts to respond properly — I hope that the Minister, in her remarks, will do so — to what the NIAO said in last month's report, and to re-establish, as our motion calls for, the Executive subcommittee on reform. However, that will not be enough. I want to talk more broadly about the broad picture of accountability and scrutiny in this place. It is not just about the narrow questions of delivering against the Audit Office's findings. In the past few weeks, we have seen more damning examples of the failure of this place to do accountability properly, including in a Committee, where the First Minister came to give evidence and members were prevented from asking questions. Those were questions that the First Minister had said that she had come to answer, on the basis of transparency, but then refused to answer, citing legal advice. No legal advice prevents any Member from asking a question. Unless there are live court proceedings and a clear legal imperative not to, legal advice would not prevent a Minister from giving an answer. A chilling precedent was set at that Committee. It was particularly chilling to see a First Minister appear to warn a Committee Chair that MLAs should be restrained from asking questions. Whatever your persuasion and whatever party to which you belong, we have to be honest about the seriousness of that precedent. That was deeply discomfiting for me, not just as leader of the Opposition but as a citizen of this place, coming after the RHI debacle. We need to be honest about that.

We also saw a monitoring round being published in the days before a general election. In Scotland, it was made very clear that a financial statement — a statement that was of much less import than the monitoring round here, which was reported by the BBC as being a mini Budget — could not be published because pre-election guidance prevented anything that would compete for news with election candidates. In this place, it was rushed out. In the Great Hall, there was a press conference, at which the Finance Minister, the First Minister and the deputy First Minister presented what amounted to a mini Budget three days before the UK general election. When I asked the head of the Civil Service about that just a couple of weeks ago at the Finance Committee, she told me that it was not her place to "critique" the actions of Ministers. It is the place of the head of the Civil Service and the most senior civil servants to defend Civil Service impartiality; to ensure that there is proper accountability; and to ensure that standards in this place and in our institutions, including pre-election guidance, are adhered to. If the speech that I am giving is uncomfortable for Members or senior civil servants, that, I am afraid, is not my problem. It is our job to do accountability and scrutiny properly. Since we returned, we have not done that properly. The Opposition intend to continue to do our job. We have also seen, since we returned, a failure to deliver on reform.

I am coming back to it.

I am coming back to that.

Thank you, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. I intend to speak clearly to our motion. It sometimes makes people uncomfortable when we talk about those things. Transparency and accountability matter, but Assembly reform also matters. That is why the Coghlin report was clear; it stated that the Assembly should consider the steps that are needed to strengthen its scrutiny role. One thing that would strengthen our scrutiny role is preventing parties from being able to collapse these institutions at the drop of a hat. After we came back, on our first Opposition day, we prioritised Assembly reform. The two big parties united to kill that proposal, but of more concern is the fact that the third party in the Executive, which has talked consistently about reform, has clearly failed to put it on the agenda in the Executive, because it is not mentioned once in the Programme for Government. All of this is about clarity, honesty and accountability to the people who send us here. Before the election, the Alliance Party told the people who sent it here with a handsome complement of MLAs that it was going to prioritise reform. So far as I can see, not a jot or tittle about reform has been placed on the agenda at the Executive. We need to get serious in this place. Our job is not simply to come here and talk through —

— meaningless motion after meaningless motion; our job is —

— to do scrutiny and accountability —

— and to improve the reputation —

— of this place. I commend the motion. Thank you very much.

1,543 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:31 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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