It was a routine weekend on CalMac services, not that it is their fault. On Friday, Arran was in familiar disarray as an oil leak put the MV Caledonian Isles out of action. Between North Uist and Harris, there was a week of cancellations and diversions after MV Loch Portain suffered propulsion failure.

By yesterday, the engineers were heading south to Islay. “Due to a technical issue with MV Hebridean Isles’ port main engine which requires further investigation” the CalMac website announced, the rest of the day’s sailings were cancelled.

I do not claim this list as comprehensive. Keeping up with CalMac disruptions would require a daily dispatch, like the weather forecast or Court Circular. It’s peak season and I guess about 2000 booked vehicles were caught up in just the episodes I have mentioned.

A distinguishing point of these three breakdowns is that each affected a vessel between 20 and 38 years old. That should be just as big a story as the Ferguson scandal because it guarantees the continuing deterioration of services to Scotland’s west coast islands. Essentially, the fleet is knackered.

This reminded me of an important story by Martin Williams in The Herald just over a year ago which revealed the Scottish Government had “quietly raised the 'depreciation' period of Scotland's ferries from 20 to 35 years”. The move was described by John Whittle, who ran CalMac in days when it was master in its own house, as “a simple ruse” to justify delaying expenditure on replacement vessels.

Just as revealing was the quote from CMAL, the Scottish Government’s vessel procurement quango. Mr Whittle, they said loftily, “clearly misunderstands the robust arrangements that are in place. The suggestion that the lifespan of vessels has been altered in line with level of available investment is nonsense”.

CMAL continued: “Vessels can operate effectively for between 30 and 40 years and do so in many parts of the world … If a vessel is properly serviced and maintained, there is no reason it cannot operate efficiently and safely for 40 years”. Well, tell that to the business owners, tourists and islanders who are now, week in, week out, at the sharp end of evidence to the direct contrary.

What “robust arrangements”?

That takes me to the SNP’s favourite prince of Denmark, Erik Østergaard. Throughout the evolving Ferguson scandal, Østegaard was chairman of CMAL. Don’t ask me why, in a land of seafarers, this role fell to a Danish bureaucrat. That question should be addressed to his patrons in Edinburgh.

Mr Østergaard has been described to me by someone with a close-up view as “the man who put a noose round CalMac’s neck”. The CMAL board having privately told Derek McKay and his superiors that the doomed contract should not go to Ferguson’s, Østergaard stayed in post when that advice was brushed aside for political reasons and remained utterly silent for five years.

The CMAL board has been equally complicit in telling Ministers and civil servants what they wanted to hear by pretending clapped-out ferries actually have a life expectancy of 35 or 40 years, thereby rationalising the case for not maintaining a replacement programme. Not one noose but two.

So what did Østergaard get out of this, other than hanging onto the CMAL role? Incredibly, late last year, he was announced as chairman of David MacBrayne Ltd, parent company of CalMac, through a process which reflected everything rotten about Scotland’s public appointment system, built round a magic circle who flit from one quango to the next, conditional only on not rocking any Ministerial boat.

Via this process, the quango man who should be held directly accountable for the plight in which Caledonian MacBrayne and communities that depend on it find themselves is now in charge of … Caledonian MacBrayne. This was breath-taking in its effrontery – while Østergaard remains entirely unknown in the islands over which he holds sway.

The panel which gave him the MacBrayne job was chaired by Frances Pacitti, the senior civil servant to whom he had answered throughout his CMAL silence – and was actually the one who replied to him rejecting the CMAL board warning in 2015. The “independent” panel member was Andrew Thin, another multi-quangoteer within Ms Pacitti’s remit, while the trio was completed by an “ethics adviser” from the Commissioner of Public Appointments, whose job is to apparently see and hear no evil.

The past six months have been among the most difficult in CalMac’s history. Not a week has passed without another significant breakdown of an ageing vessel, with untold cumulative consequences for fragile island economies. Yet where has the chairman of CalMac been when he should be facing the public to defend the reputation of his company and employees? The answer is: “In Copenhagen, where he lives and works”.

Now that Østegaard has been in the role for six months, I asked CalMac for a list of (a) ports and (b) vessels which he has visited. Answers are awaited and if they ever come, my guess is they will be ‘zero’ and ‘zero’. I also asked which local authorities in CalMac territory he has met. Another zero?

On Thursday, Østegaard is due to appear before Holyrood’s Public Audit Committee which is investigating the origins of the Ferguson contract, in response to the Auditor General’s damning report. It is, as far as I can trace, the first occasion on which our elusive Dane has been held publicly accountable in his career as a Scottish quangoteer though the inquiry’s scope may not extend to how he ended up leading an organisation he “put a noose round”.

His presence to answer that question and many more should be demanded by island MSPs worth their salt – and the audiences should be in public halls from Brodick to Stornoway.

Mr Østergaard has been allowed to hide for far too long and if he will not face the test of public accountability, he should stand down and make way for someone who cares about the damage done – rather than having the strongest possible vested interest in covering the backs of those responsible, his own included.

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