Cash for Ash

Also in the news are two stories highlighting what an embarrassment the ruling class of Northern Ireland is. First up is discovery that Stormont, controlled by the Democratic Unionist Party, is showering millions of pounds on a “charity” called Charter NI, run by a highly paid “former" paramilitary. As with all NI money, not a lot of accountability as to what happens to the 1.7 million in Social Investment Funds showered on the convicted robber, Dee Stitt, over the past year. Stitt, a member of the North Down Defenders Flute Band, got in trouble recently for saying the flute band provides homeland defense. The DUP also subsidises the flute bands, which are nominally a great past time for young people. Yet are also a handy paramilitary recruiting ground.

And then there’s the Renewable Heat Incentive, intended to incentivise conversion from an oil or gas boiler to one burning wood pellets. If NI subsidises the cost of the pellets for 20 years, it makes sense for you to convert, right? My read of “subsidise” is that you would pay, say, only 50 cents on the dollar if I subsidised your cost. In Northern Ireland, it means the government is paying $1.10 on the dollar, so to speak. Not only are your pellets free, but you will make a PROFIT the more you burn. i.e. the more you burn, the more you earn. None of the bright bulbs in Northern Ireland figured out they had set the subsidy too high. They actually had to have a secret shopper call a boiler installation company and have the company explain the payback before they realised what they had done. In England and Wales, there was a downward slope to reimbursement--a higher rate for the first X hundred hours and a lower rate thereafter. Not adopted in NI. Also in England and Wales, a fixed pie, so competition for slices. In NI, the size of the pie grew as the number of applications grew.

So of course farmers are getting paid to heat empty sheds 24/7. A whistleblower came forward in 2013, a year into the program, to let our esteemed leaders know what was going on. She was ignored. Poultry farmers, car dealers, everyone was getting in on this deal. It was suspended earlier this year, but decades of costs are locked in. The cost of the program is estimated at 1.2 billion pounds. NI talked the UK government into absorbing half of that cost. Apparently 200 million pounds of NI taxpayer money was allocated, so the overrun cost to NI is 400 million.

How does incompetence of this magnitude happen? NI’s energy department was under the false impression that London was paying for this program. It wasn’t. It was a local cost. But that belief is why it was a piñata program, shapeshifted to suit the requests of those who had pound signs in their eyes. “What does it matter if it isn’t coming out of our block grant” was the attitude. I hate that. I just hate the idea that other people’s money is free.

Even the outrage is limited to the 400mm in extra costs out of NI’s block grant. Much handwringing over the hospital that could have been built, or the doctors and nurses hired, or the roads improved. But what about the 600mm that taxpayers in Great Britain paid for this fiasco? Other towns need new hospitals and updated infrastructure too. NI has been getting a peace dividend for so long from the UK, the EU, Canada, and the US, that the idea you have to be careful with money, accountable, effective, transparent--that idea went up the chimney with the pellets.
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