The Health Minister refused to respond to allegations made in Tynwald about the circumstances surrounding the departure of his chief executive, Mark Charters.
Mr Charters quit in June less than a year after taking up his high-profile post, which commanded a salary of between £97,254 and £121,467.
The department said he had left for ‘personal reasons’ – a reason repeated in Tynwald this week by Health and Social Care Minister Howard Quayle.
But Douglas North MHK John Houghton suggested that Mr Charters had, in fact, been dismissed and had signed a confidentiality agreement before he left.
He suggested the chief executive had been given an ‘ultimatum’ in a meeting with the chief secretary, before his ‘epaulettes were ripped off’ and then ‘refused access back to Crookall House’.
Mr Quayle said he was ‘rather surprised’ by the question coming from a former chairman of the Civil Service Commission. He said it would be a ‘total breach of etiquette’ to give out further details of the senior officer’s departure.
Mr Charters was appointed to head up the newly-merged Department of Health and Social Care in July last year.
He had been spearheading a new strategy of integrated health care, based on a model pioneered at the Canterbury District Health Board in New Zealand.
There was much criticism when he and the Health Minister travelled to New Zealand on a fact-finding mission earlier this year. Mr Quayle had insisted the appointment was always only meant to be a two to three-year posting.
Mr Charters has been replaced by former chief financial officer Malcolm Couch.