ANYONE who reads the correspondence sent to States members yesterday regarding the closure of the airport and the subsequent return to work of the firefighters will be struck by two things.

The first is how the Public Sector Remuneration Committee was quite happy to let the industrial action – and economic and reputational damage to the island – continue despite a deal being on the table acceptable to airport management and staff.

The second is how tied up in bureaucratic and legal knots government process became simply to get a key strategic asset working normally.

One of the biggest impediments to getting the airport open again was the narrow point of whether the Policy Council, some ministers or the Emergency Powers Authority (islanders can almost take their pick) were cutting across the PSRC in agreeing a settlement.

While such niceties are important and what legal authority elements of government have for committing the taxpayer to particular courses of action are of fundamental significance, islanders will see it rather differently.

The States had a problem that needed resolving in the swiftest possible way but decisive action was possible only because HM Comptroller viewed that a £4,000 ‘retention’ payment to the firefighters was not remuneration or, more simply, pay.

That meant the airport management through the Public Services Department was able to agree the settlement where the PSRC had refused to do so, content to let the dispute rumble on pending a tribunal which the men would not have attended and which had no power to force them back to work.

States members may well make much of HM Comptroller’s admission that second thoughts  might suggest the matter was not quite so clear cut, but islanders and airport users will not.

Had the chief minister and some of his colleagues so chosen, a state of emergency could have been called and they could have done what they liked anyway.

In this instance, government process has spent money to buy time to get a proper solution to the firefighters’ complaints, a pragmatic outcome.

Nevertheless, the worry is that it was such a close run thing and achieved only because key legal advice was, arguably, wrong.