The long-awaited flumes at the National Sports Centre swimming pool will not be ready for business in time for the Easter holidays, a government minister has conceded.

That means the leisure pool area will remain shut too, 18 months after the closure of all pools for what was then budgeted as a £4.2 million upgrade.

Education, Sport and Culture Minister Graham Cregeen, whose department is responsible for the NSC in Douglas, told Tynwald on Tuesday that he hoped the long-running dispute involving contractors and suppliers would be resolved shortly.

But pushed on whether that meant the flumes and leisure area of pool would be open in time for the Easter holidays at the start of April, he admitted they would not.

’The flumes are not going to be open for this Easter,’ he admitted. ’We are in contractual talks with both suppliers and the main contractor.’

He said it was with ’great regret’ that he had to confirm they were not yet open but he said he hopped the ongoing talks would conclude shortly allowing work to progress on ’The necessary manufacturing of new stair components and steel work for installation’.

He said it was ’extremely disappointing, when we have gone out to contract for people to supply goods, that these goods have not been supplied in a way that we thought they should have been’.

In the department’s financial report for the year up to the end of January, it warns the pool closure will be ’prolonged up until at least May’.

It also reveals net expenditure on pool deficiencies, for the year to January 31, was £1,384,000

All the NSC pools closed for an upgrade, scheduled to last nine months, in August 2018. The main pool was only declared fully operational in October last year, after a fault in the control mechanism for the boom that divides the fixed level floor of the pool from the flexible level floor was fixed.

The issue was raised this week by Jason Moorhouse (Arbory, Castletown and Malew) who also queried whether the cost had gone up.

When the scheme was announced the cost was given at £4.2 million. Mr Moorhouse said the amount in the Budget pink book was now £5.343 million. He asked if that was what the final figure would be.

Mr Cregeen said was not aware of ’what any additional costs will be coming in, if there are any additional costs that come to the department’.