Arlene Foster has insisted she will not step down as Northern Ireland’s First Minister, and is ready to face the electorate if necessary, in an escalating row over a state-funded green energy scheme.
The Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) was supposed to offer a proportion of the cost businesses had to pay to run eco-friendly boilers, but the subsidy tariffs were set too high, and without a cap, so it ended up paying out significantly more than the price of fuel.
This enabled applicants to “burn to earn” – getting free heat and making a profit as they did it.
Claims of widespread abuse include a farmer allegedly set to pocket around £1m in the next two decades for heating an empty shed.
Ms Foster was Enterprise Minister when the controversial scheme was established in the North.
Opposition parties tabled a motion of no confidence in Ms Foster shortly before Christmas, which she survived.
Sinn Féin has made clear it will collapse Stormont’s ruling executive, triggering fresh elections, if Democratic Unionist First Minister Arlene Foster, who oversaw the inception of the scheme during her time as economy minister, does not stand aside to enable an investigation to take place.
Alliance party leader Naomi Long had written to Secretary of State James Brokenshire and the Chief Secretary to the UK Treasury David Gauke demanding intervention from London on a furore that has left Stormont facing a £490m overspend bill.
In response, a British government spokesman said: “The operation of the RHI scheme is a matter for the NI Executive. So it is right for the Executive and the Assembly to decide the form of any investigation or inquiry.”
With Mrs Foster steadfastly refusing to step down, the administration is on a course to hit the rocks in mid January when a Sinn Fein motion comes to the floor of the Assembly.
She said: “Sinn Féin are on a party-political mission to get me to step aside to weaken unionism, which I will never allow to happen…Just because I am a woman does not mean I am going to roll over to Sinn Féin.”
In an interview with Sky News, she described calls for her to step down as “misogynistic”.
“There’s a lot of it personal. There’s a lot of it, sadly, misogynistic as well, because I’m a female, the first female leader of Northern Ireland,” she said.
“I’ve come through a lot worse than venomous attacks from my political opponents and I intend to continue to lead.”
Sinn Féin itself has faced claims of flip-flopping on the question of whether a full scale public inquiry should be launched.
Confusion reigned on Monday when Sinn Féin chairman Declan Kearney issued a statement calling for a public inquiry, only for his comments to be withdraw and reissued by the party two hours later with the demand altered to a call for an independent investigation. The party blamed a “typo” for the content of the original statement.
