A government department has been criticised over its handling of a Freedom of Information request.

The Information Commissioner’s Office has issued a decision notice in relation to an FoI request submitted in December 2023.

The Department of Infrastructure’s response is no longer available to view on the government’s FoI disclosure log, having been taken down when a possible data breach in the system was revealed.

The Airport Inshore Rescue Boat was bought for just under £90,000 in October 2019 but was never used in operation due to a lack of crew training.

A total of 14 pieces of information about the rescue boat had been sought in the FoI request.

The DoI provided most of them but indicated that two items were no longer held.

After conducting an internal review, the department released the two additional pieces of information nine months later.

The applicant complained to the Information Commissioner’s Office which, following an investigation, upheld the complaint.

It concluded that the DoI failed to undertake a reasonable search, took an excessive time to answer the internal review request, and did not apply a practical refusal reason where information was deemed unavailable.

In a decision notice, the Information Commissioner acknowledged the request was handled ‘poorly’.

But as the DoI had eventually provided all the requested information, it was not required to reprocess the request.

The airport rescue vessel, under the control of the airport’s Fire and Rescue Service, was designed as a swift response to incidents at sea.

But it ended up being stored, along with its tractor and trailer, in an airport hanger.

Costs relating to it topped £283,000, the response to the 2023 FoI revealed.

A year after the boat was purchased for £87,057 in 2019, the DoI had to spend another £58,000 on building a new slipway in Derbyhaven to launch it from, as the old slipway was deemed unsuitable.

Some £100,000 was spent on a tractor to help launch the boat, although this was purchased in 2012 when the old vessel was in use.

Another £20,600 was spent on training crew members but training discontinued in late 2021 due to the necessary level of training being assessed as unattainable.

Costs associated with collecting the trailer for the tractor were put at £1,650.

An additional £15,969 was spent on equipment such as dry suits, and the installation of a short-range coastal tracking system.

Total costs revealed by the FoI were £283,278.06.

The DoI later told Isle of Man Today that maintenance and service work for the vessel cost £2,300, bringing the total to £285,578.

It emerged last year than a glitch with the FoI system allowed the ‘keywords’ search tool to reveal who had submitted particular requests, raising serious concerns over the protection of personal data and privacy.

FoI responses previously published online by the government were removed from public access but it appears that some including the one relating to the airport rescue boat were never reinstated.