A SENIOR civil servant who had to withdraw from his role leading Jersey’s ferry tender process after voting for one of the applicants in a public Facebook poll has accused ministers of a lack of support.
In emails made public after an FoI request by the JEP, Richard Corrigan told ministers he felt “badly let down” after media reports that he had voted for DFDS in an online poll led to his recusal from the ferry tender process, which last week concluded with the Danish shipping firm being selected.
Writing to Economic Development Minister Kirsten Morel and Chief Minister Lyndon Farnham on 6 November, Mr Corrigan said: “I feel badly let down by the failure to establish a clear narrative with media over the delayed decision-making on future sea connectivity.
“This has left an open position for media to speculate that the reason for delay is down to my recusal and most recently, to imply some form of bias towards one of the bidders.”
Mr Corrigan said that because civil servants in Jersey were “muzzled” it was up to ministers to speak up for them, and said he looked forward to “my time coming around under privilege of a future Scrutiny hearing”.
In another email, sent on 22 October, he asked Deputy Farnham to stress that his voting in the poll was “an inadvertent mistake”.
He also asked the Chief Minister to stress that he had “consistently pursued Islanders’ best interests in dealing with a range of particularly challenging matters on out sea connectivity in the past 12 months”.
On 19 November, Deputy Morel was asked during a Scrutiny hearing why Mr Corrigan had not attended with him. He responded: “Richard Corrigan is on sick leave. I do not really want to go any further into that, because that is entirely personal.”
After Mr Corrigan stepped away from the process he was replaced as senior reporting officer by the Infrastructure Department’s chief officer, Andy Scate.
The government has stressed that the delay in the awarding of the ferry tender was not linked to Mr Corrigan’s blunder, but in an interview last week Brittany Ferries chief executive Christophe Mathieu said: “He didn’t vote for Brittany Ferries; that’s all I can say.”
Rival DFDS was last week named as the preferred bidder for the 15-year contract to serve Jersey.
Guernsey previously announced Condor and Brittany Ferries as their preferred choice, a move that brought to an end a joint selection process to find a single operator for the Channel Islands.
