Renewable Heat Incentive Inquiry

The Northern Ireland Assembly should consider what steps are needed to strengthen its scrutiny role, particularly as conducted by Assembly Committees, in the light of lessons from the RHI. While it will be for the Assembly itself to decide, the Inquiry recommends that such a consideration might include significantly increasing the resources available to statutory committees and, generally, identifying what steps are needed to improve the effective scrutiny of Departments and their initiatives, whether in Assembly Committees or in the Assembly Chamber itself.

The Inquiry asked the Northern Ireland Assembly to strengthen its committee scrutiny role. In March 2022, the Chairpersons' Liaison Group stated that its review addressed statutory committee scrutiny of primary and subordinate legislation, while scrutiny in the Assembly Chamber itself is not mentioned in the sources (Northern Ireland Assembly, Chairpersons' Liaison Group response, Mar 2022; Northern Ireland Audit Office, Oct 2024). In October 2024, the Northern Ireland Audit Office found that work continued across Assembly bodies on 33 recommendations and officials were identifying additional resources to improve scrutiny of statutory rules and post-legislative scrutiny (Northern Ireland Audit Office, Oct 2024). It reported that the group planned to review progress against all recommendations at an update meeting scheduled for autumn 2024 (Northern Ireland Audit Office, Oct 2024).

The recommendations for change made here, to the extent they are adopted, will take time to implement; they may indeed not even be sufficient to address the range of shortcomings revealed by the Inquiry. The Inquiry therefore recommends a role in future for the Northern Ireland Audit Office in assessing and validating the extent of progress in implementing the lessons learned from the NI RHI scheme and implementing these recommendations, including reporting on such progress periodically to the Northern Ireland Assembly and the people of Northern Ireland. The Inquiry further recommends that the Northern Ireland Audit Office is provided with sufficient additional resources so as to enable it to perform such a role.

The Inquiry asked the Northern Ireland Audit Office (NIAO) to assess and report progress. In October 2024, it stated that its second report fulfilled the recommendation to assess and validate progress in implementing lessons learned from the scheme and to report periodically (Northern Ireland Audit Office, Oct 2024). Previously, in March 2022, it published its first update report assessing and validating progress in line with the recommendation, following a request to monitor implementation and report findings to the Northern Ireland Assembly and the public (Northern Ireland Audit Office response, Mar 2022).