Tuesday’s meeting of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) was not very kind to the ministry of water and housing. And some may argue that it was most harmful to former water minister Dr Karl Blythe’s campaign to return to the Cabinet and, possibly, to lead the People’s National Party (PNP).

Blythe resigned in 2002 to ensure that he could not be accused of interfering in a Prime Minister P J Patterson-ordered probe into the National Housing Development Corporation (NHDC). Questions had been raised about the NHDC’s operations, and an initial report painted Blythe as an interventionist minister who ran the NHDC/Operation PRIDE like a brotherhood.

A later probe was kinder to him, but there is still a cloud around his departure, which constantly threatens to rain on his parade.

The most important revelation during Tuesday’s meeting was the issue of the Central Westmoreland Trust’s 2002/2003 project to develop Grotto and Toll Gate in the constituency, which the former minister represented at the time.

PAC chairman Audley Shaw obviously has an interest in full disclosure in this matter. It was Shaw who had questioned, shortly after Blythe’s resignation in 2002, the relationship between the Trust, which Blythe admitted that he had founded, and the ministry, which he headed at the time.

Blythe had then dismissed Shaw’s concerns as “rubbish”, but they have not completely disappeared from the horizon. On Tuesday, the ministry claimed that the Trust owes it $307.2 million because no principal or interest has ever been paid on the $171.8 million which was loaned to the Trust to carry out the project in Blythe’s constituency.

But Shaw’s efforts to dig deeper into the issue were thwarted by the argument from NHDC head Milverton Reynolds, who said the matter was before the court “and one has to be very careful what one says”.

Shaw responded that Parliament was still the highest court of the land and his committee was concerned about access to housing solutions and the spending of public funds.

But Reynolds got strong support from, of all persons, Opposition member Mike Henry.

“I am merely advising caution in that respect,” Henry said. He was supported by government members of the committee.

The suit filed by the NHDC and the counter-suit filed by the Trust have led the NHDC to request a date for case management – March 1 has been decided upon.

“Given the arguments on both sides, I believe it would be appropriate for some compromise to take place on the interest. I would find that agreeable,” said Auditor General Adrian Strachan.

But chairman Shaw would have the last word.

“You have roughly a thousand lots, marketable lots that either have all been sold or most of them have been sold.

It seems to me that you need to understand the considerable leverage, in terms of knowing the value position from which you start, and it seems to me the gravamen of all of this is, ‘where have all the proceeds gone?’,” he told Reynolds.