Debate contribution: RHI (Closure of Non-Domestic Scheme) Bill: Final Stage

Debate contribution by Ms Sinéad McLaughlin on 12 May 2026.

MLA

Ms Sinéad McLaughlin

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

12 May 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

RHI (Closure of Non-Domestic Scheme) Bill: Final Stage

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5528286

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Today's Final Stage of the Bill marks the closing chapter of one of the darkest episodes in the history of devolution. The renewable heat incentive scheme should have been an opportunity. It should have helped Northern Ireland transition to cleaner energy and supported businesses to reduce costs and emissions. Instead, it became synonymous with waste, scandal and public anger. For years, people here watched as confidence in the institutions collapsed. They saw a scheme without proper cost controls, warnings ignored and the consequences spiral into a political crisis that brought the institutions down. That damage ran far more deeply than the financial cost. At a time when families were struggling and public services were under pressure, people looked at the RHI scandal and asked themselves whether government was capable of acting in the public interest. Trust was broken, and rebuilding it has taken years. Therefore, while the Bill is technical in nature, its significance is much broader. Closing the scheme finally draws a line under a policy failure that cast a long shadow across our politics and the institutions. It is an acknowledgement that the scheme failed and caused enormous damage and that the lessons from it must never be ignored. The truth is that RHI did not fail because renewable energy is the wrong ambition; it failed because of poor governance, weak oversight and political failure. As we debate the legislation, there is an important lesson for all of us in the Chamber: Northern Ireland still faces huge challenges around energy policy, energy affordability and decarbonisation. We need to expand renewable generation, improve energy security and lower costs for households and businesses, which remain exposed to volatile geopolitics and global markets, but we can do that only if there is public confidence in the decisions that we make here. That means proper transparency, scrutiny and accountability. It means getting policy right from the beginning. The public expect better from us after what happened with the RHI scheme. We expect Ministers and Departments to properly assess risk, properly manage public money and properly listen when concerns are raised. Those are not unreasonable expectations; they are the bare minimum. As the scheme finally comes to an end, we should remember its wider consequences for politics and public trust here. We cannot undo the damage that was done, but we can ensure that the failures that led to the scandal are never repeated. That must be the lasting lesson of RHI.

409 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 15:33 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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