Judge says N Ireland eco-scandal not caused by corruption
The Associated Press | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 5 years, 4 months AGO
DUP leader Arlene Foster speaks to the media in the Great Hall of Parliament Buildings, Stormont, in Belfast, Friday, Jan. 10, 2020. Northern Ireland's major political parties agreed Friday to restore the Belfast-based government, three years after it collapsed in acrimony and left 1.8 million people with no regional government. (Brian Lawless/PA via AP)
LONDON (AP) — A public inquiry concluded Friday that a green-energy scandal which triggered the breakdown of Northern Ireland’s government was caused by a series of errors and not political corruption.
Northern Ireland’s Catholic-Protestant power-sharing administration collapsed in January 2017 because of wrangling between the political parties over the Renewable Heat Incentive, a program that rewarded business and farmers for using environmentally friendly fuel.
Flaws in the scheme meant subsidies for the wood-pellet fuel were higher than their cost, making it profitable to heat empty buildings to earn more money.
Retired judge Patrick Coghlin, who led the inquiry, said “corrupt or malicious activity” was not responsible for the design flaws that saw applicants "perversely incentivised" to burn excess heat to turn a profit.
He concluded that “the vast majority of what went wrong was due to an accumulation and compounding of error and omissions over time” by “a broad range of persons and organizations.”
The main Irish nationalist party, Sinn Fein, quit the government in January 2017 over the handling of the affair by Arlene Foster, leader of the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party.
The rift soon widened to broader cultural and political issues separating Northern Ireland's British unionists and its Irish nationalists. Power-sharing was finally restored in January 2020.
ARTICLES BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Latest: US helped family escape Afghanistan overland
WASHINGTON — The United States is confirming for the first time that it has helped a U.S. citizen and family members to escape Afghanistan through an overland route to a neighboring country.
The Latest: US helped family escape Afghanistan overland
WASHINGTON — The United States is confirming for the first time that it has helped a U.S. citizen and family members to escape Afghanistan through an overland route to a neighboring country.
The Latest: Top Republican says Taliban holding Americans
WASHINGTON — The top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee says some Americans who have been trying to get out of Afghanistan since the U.S. military left are sitting in airplanes at an airport ready to leave but the Taliban are not letting them take off.