Tynwald ’working together’ is the biggest success of the current administration, according to Chief Minister Howard Quayle.
He said some of his government’s key successes also included buying the Steam Packet and addressing public sector pension shortfalls as among his government’s successes.
In Tynwald this month he was asked by Kate Costain (LibVannin, Douglas South) to list both successes and failures of his administration - although he rebranded the latter as ’slippages’.
After listing what he regarded as the major achievements, the chief minister said: ’The biggest success of this administration and this Tynwald is working together, because we could not have achieved any of this if the vast majority of us hadn’t worked for the greater good of the island.
’I’ve been in previous administrations where there was just too much in-fighting.
’So we have achieved a lot, but we can do better, and we constantly strive to.’
He said the list of successes was too long to go into during a Tynwald sitting, but he picked out some of what he regarded as highlights.
Mr Quayle’s highlights included:
* ’Securing our sea services’ through the £38 million Liverpool landing stage scheme and the £124 million purchase of the Steam Packet.
* Agreeing a climate change action plan.
* Developing legislation to address the public sector pension shortfalls.
* Investigating concerns over use of zero-hours contracts.
On where the government had not been so successful, Mr Quayle added: ’I’m not going to say failures, but there have been slippages in the delivery of some of our plan.
’But if you run a business or any venture, you will set yourself targets and you will be successful in some, and in other areas you might be a little bit slow and in others areas you have had failure.’
Miss Costain asked whether the likes of dealing with homelessness, improvements on fuel poverty and housing, would come under successes or failures/slippages.
He said those issues were ’something that we are working hard on at the moment,’ but there was more to be done.
He added they were classed as being on ’amber’ - at risk of falling behind - as opposed to green, for on target, or red, for behind schedule.
He said it was vital to ensure that the issue did not fall into the red category.