Talk:Renewable Heat Incentive scandal

Image for the lead

Hi. I've been adding images to the article and I was going to add the image of Martin McGuinness resigning, but I can't find any images that aren't copyrighted or that meet the non-free criteria. Nonetheless, I was going to add a picture to the lead. I originally was going to add a picture of Parliament Buildings, but I thought this would've been irrelevant because it didn't really start with the Assembly, but rather the Executive.

My question is: should we add the image of Arlene Foster to the lead, rather than to the history section? st170e 17:58, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

I've performed this edit, if anyone disagrees they can comment here. st170e 18:39, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Need to split article?

I hope everyone is happy with my big copyedit!

Most of the article seems to have become taken up with the consequent political fallout. Should this be hived off into a separate article?
Outside Agitator aka --88.97.11.54 (talk) 13:13, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your edits. At the minute I think we should stick with the status quo because everything on there is linked to the RHI scandal. Perhaps if it comes to it, we could change the name of the article to 2017 political crisis (but that's only if there really is a crisis, so we should wait and see what happens). I think that we should make Martin McGuinness' resignation a new section in the article; although it is political reaction, it is major news and a lot of the sections following his resignation is reaction to his resignation, not political reaction to the RHI fallout. st170e 16:06, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Stormont collapse - new section?

Just seeking views from other users here. Shall we separate the collapse of Stormont into a separate section? This is major news in itself or should we keep it under the section of McGuinness' resignation? st170e 16:31, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Please clarify

I don't want to get into editing this myself, but after reading it I'm sort of confused. It talks about a 20 year commitment that costs something around $500m, then about blowing through nearly that much money by keeping the application period open for two months - is this saying that the government managed to commit itself somehow to making these expenditures for the next 20 years? And the applications are in the thousands - does that mean that each one was getting something like 500,000? And the 1.60 pounds paid for 1 pound expenditure is confusing - they're really saying that the government was paying businesses MORE than their heating cost to use renewable fuel?

Aside from this, my vague impression of wood pellet heating from articles in the U.S. is to expect choking smoke, noise, angry neighbors. Is Northern Ireland now inundated in such complaints? Or was the money just shuffled and disappeared without anything happening? Or do they have a better way to do it over there?

I hope there is at least one useful idea here for improving the article. Wnt (talk) 22:46, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

The government signed contracts with the participants to fund their heating for the next 20 years, so long that they use renewable resources. And yes, the government was paying businesses more than their heating cost to use renewable fuel.

The government department involved has refused to release the names of the participants, so we don't know yet who benefitted from the scheme, but it is most likely farms in the countryside. There were also allegations today made by Jonathan Bell that friends of the DUP were benefitting from the scheme, and that's why the scheme was postponed. I'm not sure if this should be added to the article yet as the claims don't have evidence (yet?). With regards to the heating, biomass could also be utilised and the government would still pay the rate at £1 = £1.60.

I've edited the article a bit, let me know if you think the changes have been helpful. st170e 23:13, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

This is helpful, but I'm still confused. The way the article reads, it sounds like anyone who wanted could collect a tremendous amount of free money with a simple application. Yet there were only a few thousand applications. Why? Did people not know, did only certain applications get acted on, or is there something so expensive or unpleasant about setting up a pellet stove that even with this generous deal most people still thought it was a bad idea? Also, there's the question of what it would take to undo the contracts. I would assume there is a way for the government to break them if the costs of anything the applicant did so far are reimbursed? Is there an evaluation of that cost? Wnt (talk) 11:04, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

The scheme was trying to encourage people to completely move away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy, so applicants needed to move completely towards renewable energy resources. There was a 98% approval rate for the scheme; it's probable that not enough people knew about the scheme. I'm going to edit the article now and include the plan submitted to 'reduce the costs to zero'. The Assembly has another 9 days before it is officially dissolved and they're trying to pass emergency legislation to effectively null the contracts (from what I understand, but that would be subject to legal challenges because it was a contract).

I'm going to update the article more on the scheme itself because it seems that there's more on it about the political reaction. st170e 20:56, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

DUP

I cannot find the definition of DUP anywhere in the article. As someone who lives outside the UK, I have no idea what it means. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.220.140.163 (talk) 00:37, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

DUP means Democratic Unionist Party. I've updated the lead section to include this. st170e 02:50, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Two months? Three months?

At present the article says

The scheme attracted almost 1,000 applications in the last three months of the scheme, which is when the minister claimed he tried to close the scheme. These two months are significant as Bell was not in his ministerial position, due to the DUP's rolling resignations in 2015.

Which is it? --88.97.11.54 (talk) 16:57, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

I've just checked the sources, and it's a problem with the source. It's September to November inclusive. I'll update this accordingly. st170e 17:50, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

References