The Chief Minister has released a statement explaining why inaccurate figures relating to childcare costs were given to Tynwald members.

The amounts, reported by the Minister for Health and Social Security in February this year, refer to the money paid to care providers Manx Family Services in childcare costs.

Donald Gelling (pictured) says they were incorrect and in one instance a figure was understated by almost ?2 million.

He is keen to stress the department's Director of Finance was absent on sick leave during the period, which led to a more junior member of staff researching the costs.

Kate Skinner reports (text from attached audio file):

According to Mr Gelling, the figures were compiled by the finance section. However, after referring these to the Internal Audit Division, it was found that mistakes had been made in the way these amounts were obtained.

For the year 2001-2002 the figure was transposed wrong and was actually ?200,000 less.

For the next financial year, the IAD found the figure was over ?250,000 less than the figure stated in Tynwald, and for 2003-2004 there was another overstatement of over ?130,000.

But by far the biggest miscalculation was for the year 2004-2005 when the figure was short by almost ?2 million, thought to have been because of the omission of a type of BACS payment.

In his statement, Mr Gelling is keen to stress the mistakes are due to misinterpretation, and not an intentional omission to mislead Tynwald, and there is no evidence to suggest the errors were deliberate.