Former First Minister Arlene Foster has been advertising herself as a renewable energy expert at a cost of more than £10,000 a day.
Following her resignation from the DUP in 2021 and her own show on GB News, the crossbench peer is presenting herself for hire through a public speaking agency.
The Belfast Telegraph posed as a fictitious corporate fixer to ask about the cost of speakers for a green energy firm’s executive day away – the agency said that hiring the Baroness for a full day would cost “in the region of £10,000”.
The decision to advertise her as a ‘renewable energy expert’ comes as a surprise to many due to her involvement in the RHI scandal.
Read more
The failed renewable energy incentive scheme, which saw Northern Ireland’s government pay £1.60 for every £1 of fuel the public burned in their wood-pellet boilers, cost the public almost £500 million.
The scandal faced immense backlash from parties across the political spectrum in NI, which eventually led to the protest resignation of deputy First Minister Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness and the collapse of the assembly in 2017.
Ciarán Dunbar is joined by Belfast Telegraph Northern Ireland Editor Sam McBride, who is also the author of ‘Burned: The Inside Story of the ‘Cash-for-Ash’ Scandal and Northern Ireland’s Secretive New Elite’.
Arlene Foster goes from RHI Scandal to £10k-a-day green energy ‘expert’ – here’s how we found out
