• Northern Ireland Act states role of a Minister is to ‘direct and control the Department’
• RHI debacle is costliest financial scandal since partition in 1921
• Foster must take responsibility

Commenting on what Ministerial responsibility means amid the RHI debacle, Ulster Unionist Peer, Lord Empey said:

“As a former Minister for over six years in the Northern Ireland Executive, leading three Departments, including the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment, I have been looking at the unfolding crisis develop over the Renewable Heat Incentive Scheme.

“Without going into the minutiae of the Scheme, I want to look at where ultimate responsibility lies for the debacle that is emerging given the current level of public knowledge of what has been happening.

“Northern Ireland Ministers derive their powers and responsibilities from the Northern Ireland Act of 1998. That Act states that a Minister is to ‘…direct and control the Department’.

“This provision means that the Minister is charged with presiding over the development and implementation of policy, either by legislation or administrative actions. It also means that the Minister is accountable to the Assembly for the operation of his/her Department.

“It’s commonplace for Oppositions in most democratic countries to call for a Minister to resign. However, even allowing for that, there has been a growing tendency in recent years for UK Ministers to fail to resign when they made mistakes or when people acting on their behalf fail in their duties.

“In this particular case, Minister Foster oversaw the development and subsequent implementation of the Northern Ireland version of the RHI Scheme: (it is not without significance that Mrs Foster asked London for permission to depart from the UK wide Scheme and develop a Northern Ireland version of the Scheme). The recent publication of letters which she sent to Banks proves that she actively promoted the scheme as well.

“Mrs Foster, therefore, had responsibility for the design, implementation and promotion of the RHI Scheme. That it has gone dramatically wrong, costing the Northern Ireland Executive over £490 million (and rising according to the Finance Minister) means that it is without doubt the costliest financial scandal since partition in 1921.

“Mrs Foster continues to argue that she was effectively let down by officials in her Department. It is perfectly possible that some of her officials did make misjudgements, but only a proper investigation will be able to ascertain that for sure.

“But having led a number of Departments myself, I find this crisis deeply puzzling. My experience of the Northern Ireland Civil Service was that at the level of Departmental Headquarters, it contained many highly motivated and capable people with robust systems in place to prevent such disasters. Indeed the Department of Finance would have been heavily involved in this Scheme as well as DETI.

“But the principle of Ministerial responsibility means that the Minister is ultimately culpable for the outworking of the Department’s activities, be they good or bad. After all, photograph after photograph has appeared of Minister Foster and all other Ministers when they are celebrating some success or other, even if that was due to good work by the Department. The other side of that coin is that when things go wrong the Minister must take responsibility for that.

“Given the scale of this disaster and given Mrs Foster’s involvement at all stages, I think any objective observer would conclude that she must step down and take responsibility. That’s how it works in the real world and in all walks of life (ask any Premier division football manager!). There is simply no escape from this fact.

“Mrs Foster is a young woman and if she resigns she has the opportunity to come back again in the future. But if she resists, and gives in to the pleadings of her large DUP SPAD payroll vote, she will drag this crisis out with revelation after revelation until she damages herself and the Institutions perhaps beyond repair.

“Arlene`s attitude to this crisis has been wrong from the start; the decision of the DUP to publish a Ministerial letter she sent to the Banks as DETI Minister displays the fact that her party at Stormont does not distinguish between itself and what should be separate – a government Department. I hope she reflects on these matters during the recess, takes the necessary action by resigning and allow Stormont to start 2017 with a determination to fix this mess, and go forward to deliver some much needed effective action to raise living standards and resolve the problems in the Health Service which are blighting the lives of so many.”