The island is looking at the wrong area for the cruise market it is seeking to grow, according to Douglas East MHK Chris Robertshaw.

Mr Robertshaw was part of a committee questioning Infrastructure Minister Ray Harmer, chief executive Nick Black and director of ports Ann Reynolds.

During the hearing, Mr Robertshaw noted that all the discussion had been of smaller cruise ships visiting the island and how if the proposed £80m development of Douglas Harbour goes ahead, more would be able to visit and berth on the outside of the Victoria Pier.

If this is proved to be a success, it had previously been suggested that the harbour could be further developed for larger cruise ships.

However, Mr Robertshaw doubted this. He said: ’I can’t understand how developing the small cruise ship market will somehow be an indication to use in the future that we should be going down a different route elsewhere for the provision of a deep water harbour because the two are completely different markets.

’And you know as well as I do that with the smaller vessels, the average age is 26 and the average life of them is 30 years.’

He added that smaller ones are being built for Arctic cruises but the Irish Sea market is heading towards larger cruise ships.

Mr Robertshaw said that growth markets and investment in the western islands of Britain is heading in a different direction while ’we keep wanting to invest very large sums in a small harbour only our vessels can fit in’.

Nick Black, chief executive of DoI, responded that ’at the moment, all that the Minister has asked for funding for is the research work’.

He added: ’Work done to date was done by Deloitte not funded by our department, but was made available to us.

’While I’m neither an economist nor an accountant that paper as I read it didn’t give a clear case for investing large sums because there were uncertainties about amount earned from each passenger, the number of passengers and the total costs involved.’