Statement by TUV leader Jim Allister:-
“The drastic changes announced by the Department of the Economy to the RHI tariffs will bear heavily and unfairly on genuine poultry farmers, of whom there are many in my constituency.
“I care nothing for anyone ripping off the taxpayer through abuse of the scheme established by Mrs Foster, but I am concerned for those who in good faith invested heavily on the basis of the DUP leader’s ‘grandfathering’ assurance and who then used the scheme responsibly. Now, they have been left high and dry by an announcement that has overdone what was necessary.
“If the department is trying by this punitive step to purge itself of its own complicity in the Cash for Ash scandal, then it has only compounded its bungling.
“We were told the temporary reductions last year and the year before balanced the RHI budget with no further drawings required on the block grant. If that is right and the Treasury was therefore funding the cost, why has an approach been taken which will see Northern Ireland boiler owners paid substantially less than their GB counterparts? How is this fair, particularly with the history of governmental promotion of the scheme?
“Many poultry farmers in North Antrim and elsewhere will rightly feel done over by a department whose crass mishandling produced the situation in the first place.”