SPEAKING on Sunday’s BBC phone-in, the Public Services Department minister made it clear that if the proposed £93.5m. energy-from-waste project fails to deliver, he will have no hesitation in resigning.

With respect to him, that offer is far too late.

What islanders and his political colleagues need to know now is that if there are any further delays or set-backs to the Suez proposals, then he and his political board will go immediately.

With a requete and an alternative proposal in the background plus a clearly unhappy electorate, if the Brouard petition is any guide, everyone needs to know that the stakes are exceptionally high and that incinerator-bashing is not some trivial pursuit.

For many, perhaps most, islanders the proposed waste solution is too big, too expensive and too toxic. For the PSD and – so far – the Assembly, there is simply no other credible alternative.

One of the biggest criticisms levelled at the States of Guernsey by the Wales Audit Office was that decision-making processes are unclear, protracted, and not always underpinned by good quality information.

What no one can argue is that PSD is convinced that it has had access to all the information and advice necessary to come to an informed decision on waste disposal and had made its recommendations accordingly based on a huge volume of work and input from their professional staff and consultants.

Others are free to dispute their findings and even the material on which it was based, but the point remains that PSD has come to a view and everyone should be clear what meddling with it would entail.

This is not just a matter for PSD, of course. Ministers and their boards should be far more robust in declaring that set piece proposals are also a point of principle. Significant meddling leads to resignation – and the States can pick up the pieces of its own doing.

Only when members face the consequences of protracted delays while new boards are appointed, if suitable candidates can be found, and brought up to speed, will they be less prone to exercise their right to micro-manage with zero responsibility.