RHI report findings “damning” for unreformed Stormont: O’Toole

A report finding that a little over half of the RHI report’s recommendations have been implemented is a damning indictment of the failure of Stormont to reform itself, Leader of the Opposition Matthew O’Toole has said.

Mr O’Toole was speaking as the NI Audit Office (NIAO) published a stark report on the implementation of the recommendations of the Inquiry chaired by Sir Patrick Coughlin, which was published in 2020 after a years-long study costing millions of pounds. When the Executive was restored in 2020, all Executive parties committed to implement the recommendations on how to improve performance within devolved Government.

As well as finding that a significant proportion of the RHI inquiry findings are not likely to be met, the NIAO reported that the Executive sub-committee on implementing the findings had not met since 2020 and that the position in relation to records-keeping had “regressed” since 2022.

South Belfast MLA Matthew O’Toole said:

“This report paints a bleak picture of a Stormont that has endured what should have been existential scandal but simply returned to its old ways afterwards. Particularly shocking is the fact that an Executive sub-committee set up to implement the review’s findings has not met in four years. The fiasco over record keeping and COVID seems to point to a Stormont regime at both political and official level that is simply unwilling to change.

“The DUP may have been the party most culpable for the RHI fiasco in the first place, but this report casts Sinn Féin in a damning light. They still maintain that they were right to collapse Government over RHI in 2017, a decision which led to three years of political chaos. But since 2020, successive Finance Ministers in charge of pushing through post-RHI reforms have been Sinn Féin ones – and this report illustrates that they simply haven’t bothered.

“We are now nearly half a decade into the new decade that was much heralded in 2020, but neither the Executive parties nor the civil service leadership appear to be serious about a new approach. The Opposition intends to hold them to account for their failure to offer anything close to the reform that was promised.”

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