ONE of the central planks of the Treasury and Resources argument in favour of selling Aurigny Air Services – and its irreplaceable and invaluable Gatwick slots – to Blue Islands for a token was that the new owner would have to invest heavily in new aircraft because the Aurigny fleet was nearing the end of its working life.

Today, we now know that such claims are nonsense and the manufacturer itself has cleared some Trislanders for up to another 24 years.

So at least part of the department’s desire to sell, which it withheld from those appointed to run the airline on the Bailiwick’s behalf, was founded on misinformation. What does that say about the credibility of Treasury and Resources?

Either it couldn’t be bothered to check information supplied by a third party – quite possibly provided by someone with a direct financial interest in the outcome – or it didn’t care what the facts were, because all that mattered was the sale.

In either event, this unhappy episode appears to have put Treasury well outside its mandate, ‘to be accountable to the States for the management and safeguarding of public funds and other resources entrusted to the department’.

There appears to have been a particularly cavalier attitude towards good governance, transparency and accountability from a department that, above all others, ought to do things better and islanders have yet to be favoured with a full explanation of how T&R got things so wrong.

While the political ramifications are one thing – and this looks like a far better candidate than the firefighters’ industrial action for an inquiry – there is the overlooked matter of Aurigny’s 280 staff, who still do not know whether some or all of their jobs are safe or whether the uncertainty over their future and that of the company will drag on for weeks more yet.

Perhaps what is worse about this is that the department is supposed to be looking after the airline on behalf of islanders but its actions to date have undermined it and damaged confidence in the quality of its aircraft.

Yet none of the political board members appears to give a damn.