Onchan MHK Rob Callister has written to his constituents after he was sacked from the Council of Ministers.

Read our report about him being sacked here.

He told the chief minister that being sacked was grossly unfair. Read more here.

In his message to constituents, Mr Callister wrote:

Dear Onchan Constituent,

After my sacking on Thursday morning as the island’s Health and Social Care Minister, I did promise to give constituents a further update, but I am keen to draw a line under these unfortunate events of the past week as quickly as possible.

Firstly, I would just like to say how appreciative and grateful I am for all of the messages of support I have received from family, friends and constituents over the past few days.

Those very kind messages of support certainly helped me get through a couple of very difficult days on Wednesday and Thursday this week, and I would also like to thank personally many of my Tynwald colleagues who have called me or messaged me every day since Tuesday.

As I mentioned the other day, Manx politics is difficult, complex and harsh at times, but one thing is certain, everything we say and do is in the public domain.

With regards to being sacked, I still feel the unfairness and unjustness of being sacked as the island’s Health and Social Care Minister, especially when I wasn’t given the support or a genuine opportunity to resolve many of the issues within the department.

Anyone that actually knows me would fully appreciate and understand that I have always admitted my own mistakes and I’ve always taken responsibility for my own actions, but on this occasion no details or evidence of my alleged failings have been provided, which makes it so unfair.

With regards to the press release that was put out by the department members earlier on this week, I’m happy to go on the record to say that the short statement is a very clever play on words.

Of course no Tynwald Member has the power to hire or fire; but a group of Tynwald Members certainly have the power to give a Chief Minister an ultimatum, which is what actually happened here.

It is worth mentioning that one member formally wrote to me as the Minister tendering their resignation - and as the Minister I fully respected that resignation, because things were happening in the department outside my control and I’m not entirely sure how I would’ve reacted as a department member in the same set of circumstances.

The other two members didn’t have the decency to write to me or to speak to me directly as the Minister outlining their concerns.

In my opinion the Chief Minister was put in an impossible position of having to choose between them or me. I know from the conversations we had that he did everything he could to try and resolve the situation, but the department members were unwilling to compromise.I believe the department members simply didn’t understand or appreciate the complexity of a department that had no Chief Executive in post when I took up the position, a department that was clearly understaffed, under-resourced and under extreme pressure for long periods of time.

Anyway, time to move on and I’m looking forward to getting back to work on Monday - and again I thank everybody for their kind messages over the last couple of days…..