A senior civil servant has told MLAs that he is hopeful a road map can be created to deal with outstanding recommendations from the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) Inquiry.
Neil Gibson, permanent secretary at the Department of Finance, told Stormont’s Public Accounts Committee that a plan to deal with remaining recommendations had been forwarded to minister Caoimhe Archibald.
The RHI scheme, set up in Northern Ireland in 2012, incentivised businesses and farmers to switch to the eco-friendly boilers by paying them a subsidy for the wood pellet fuel needed to run them.
Neil Gibson, permanent secretary at the Department of Finance, gave evidence to MLAs (Rebecca Black/PA)
But mistakes in its designs saw the subsidy rates set higher than the actual cost of the wood pellets, with applicants finding themselves able to burn to earn.
With Stormont facing an overspend bill of hundreds of millions of pounds, cost-control steps were taken in 2019.
In 2020, a public inquiry identified a multiplicity of mistakes in the running of the scheme.
The inquiry, chaired by retired judge Sir Patrick Coghlin, produced a 656-page, three-volume report containing 319 findings and making a number of recommendations.
A critical Audit Office report last year found that only 26 of 42 recommendations had been implemented.
Committee chairman Daniel McCrossan said a letter had been sent to Mr Gibson last October asking if there was a plan in place “with defined timescales” for the remaining recommendations to be addressed.
The SDLP MLA added: “Within the response received by this committee on November 6, you stated that officials would be shortly putting advice to the minister on how best to make progress on that particular matter,
“Given that we’re now two months on, can you give advice on whether this has happened, and is there now a plan in place with defined timescales for the implementation?”
Mr Gibson said the advice had been provided by officials to Finance Minister Ms Archibald to consider before being it would be forwarded to the Executive.
He said: “I’m hopeful that that will give us a plan to complete all of those actions that will be agreeable with the NIAO (Northern Ireland Audit Office).”
Mr McCrossan asked him when he expected the outstanding recommendations would be fully implemented.
Mr Gibson said he could not answer that as Ms Archibald had to decide on “particular approaches” to some of them.
He said: “So some of them around policy areas and things will take quite significant time, others can be done a little bit more quickly.”
The official added: “We’re very hopeful that this plan, which as I say is with the minister, will hopefully lead to a road map to complete the last of the recommendations. “