Tynwald voted yesterday to re-form the Select Committee with the specific purpose of requesting and reviewing Isle of Steam Packet Company audited accounts for 2007.
As announced previously, the Steam Packet Company welcomes the re-forming of the Committee in the hope that it will give the Company the opportunity to address publicly the shortcomings of the original report of November 2008. Audited accounts for the years ended 2006 and 2007 have already been given to the Committee. These will show very clearly that the Committee’s comments that freight charges should be reduced, and the recommendation that notice be given on the current fuel surcharge agreement, are not in the best interests of Island residents or visitors.
Despite our assistance to the Committee, and in contradiction to some of the comments made by its chairman in Tynwald on 18th February 2009, the Committee chose not to put Steam Packet Company comments in proper context in its November 2008 report. It also chose to selectively amend the report, despite a full response by the Steam Packet Company. Instead the Committee published the Company’s comments in a separate appendix where they did not benefit from equal prominence.
Mark Woodward, Chief Executive of the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company, said: “As I have indicated previously, I am pleased that the Select Committee is to be re-formed. I can confirm that the Company will engage fully with the Committee as we seek to address, as a matter of public record, misinformed comments in the Committee’s report of November 2008.”
