Second islander rejected for CMAL board

New board members were appointed to CMAL, but again the islands were shunned.

Comhairle nan Eilean Siar has described the Scottish Government’s public appointments system as “unacceptable” and called for “urgent reform” of “insulting’ appointments to the boards of CMAL and Caledonian MacBrayne.

As revealed by the Gazette last week, Transport Secretary Fiona Hyslop again ignored pleas for island representation by appointing a Yorkshire-based railway consultant to the board of CMAL while a highly qualified island applicant found himself being “grilled on diversity” with no interest shown in island factors.

A second islander is known to have confirmed that he endured the same experience before being rejected. The CMAL appointments follow Ms Hyslop’s decision to rubber-stamp reappointments of the Copenhagen-based chair of CalMac, Erik Østergaard, and two other directors who have never visited a CalMac port.

The Comhairle said: “These are organisations whose sole responsibility is to deliver ferry services and their associated vessels and infrastructure to island communities…

“The latest insult is the appointment of another two mainland-based board members to CMAL who appear to have no connection to the islands CMAL is serving”.

Transport committee chair, Uisdean Robertson,said: “In the case of the CMAL appointments we are aware of extremely capable and competent applicants living and working in our communities who have been overlooked. This is unacceptable. The time has come for the appointment process to be overhauled, and we would suggest Ministers consider this as an urgent action to be taken forward in partnership with Island Councils”.

Mr Robertson told the Gazette he had been named as a referee by one of the island applicants but no request for a reference was received. “You would have thought that they might have made even that gesture out of respect for local knowledge and experience, but not a bit of it”, he said.

As reported last week, one island applicant for the CMAL board said he was asked “absolutely zilch” about matters affecting the islands. He described it as a “totally surreal experience” as he was “grilled on diversity”, with CMAL chair and Edinburgh lawyer, Morag McNeill, leading the charge. She was deputy to Østergaaard when he chaired CMAL throughout the Ferguson debacle.

One of the successful candidates, Mark Tarry, left a senior position with Network Rail after less than a year, without public explanation. Earlier this year, he was appointed to the board of the Scottish Public Pensions Agency, before being drafted into the CMAL role.

The Comhairle statement called for “a complete overhaul of the appointments process to the Boards of both CMAL and CalMac, and for it to be shaped by islanders with islanders involved in any interview question setting and panel. Ministers should act to undertake to advertise all vacancies with a firm promise on the proportion of the Board to be made up of island residents”.