Policy and Reform Minister Chris Thomas was forced on the defensive once more the scrapping of plans for a 2018 Year of Our Island commemorative coin after it had already been designed.

As he ducked repeated attempts to extract details of the cost of the decision, the exasperation of some backbench MHKs became apparent.

But the minister - who tried to deflect some of the questions to Treasury Minister Alfred Cannan for another day - was unrepentant.

He accused his critics of making a ’mountain out of a molehill’.

It was revealed last week that a commemorative £5 crown had been designed - Tynwald approval had been granted for its issue - but it was never produced, leaving collectors and some MHKs scratching their heads.

Mr Thomas insisted there had been no cost incurred by the Year of Our Island organisers, but others wanted to know whether any government departments had been impacted by the expense of designing the coin and putting it forward for royal and Tynwald approval.

Lawrie Hooper (LibVannin, Ramsey) suggested the Year of Our Island team should have done more research on potential demand for the coin before putting the Treasury to work.

’Treasury went through all the effort of putting together the legwork, designing the coin, putting the order together for Tynwald,’ he said. That was ’completely wasted’ because the Year of Our Island did not carry out ’proper research up front’.

Mr Thomas said he could not ’imagine the costs are a great deal’ but said the question should be directed to the Treasury.

Clare Bettison (Douglas East), who highlighted the coin’s non-appearance last week, demanded: ’I wonder if, rather than trying to imagine the costs, you could perhaps go away and then come back with the actual costs to share with us?’

However, Tim Baker (Ayre and Michael) sprang to Mr Thomas’s defence, saying the cost of preparing answers to parliamentary questions was ’substantial’ and other members needed to get a ’sense of perspective’.

Daphne Caine (Garff) a member of the political board for the Year of Our Island, agreed, adding: ’It seems a shame to get bogged down in the detail of one small initiative that did not progress.’

But Miss Bettison rejected the criticism.

’I do not support not proceeding with this, what I am questioning is why we did the design prior to gauging the interest that would have indicated not doing the design,’ she said.

’To pick up on Mr Baker’s point, he is suggesting not asking questions but in fact the minister is suggesting asking another one to a different department, when we could have just had this resolved if we had just got an answer to the original question.’

Earlier Mr Thomas did reveal the decision-making process behind the ditching of the coin.

’During the winter of 2017-18, the design for the coin was developed with officers in Treasury,’ he said.

’In spring 2018 the design received royal approval and final costs were able to be confirmed from Treasury.

’Those costs were £13.94 plus VAT for a crown, that was based on 500 crowns as an order, £8.16 plus VAT for 1,000 crowns.

’So we explored the sales outlets and calculated the predicted return on the investment in the spring of 2018 and we decided not to proceed.’