Prime Minister Robert Abela has said that Amanda Muscat - who is now Tourism Minister Clayton Bartolo's wife - has not worked for the government since he personally terminated her employment over three years ago.

"The concerned individual, Amanda Muscat, has not worked for the government since that day. She does not work for the government [anymore]," the Prime Minister said.

Speaking to the Times of Malta, Abela said that he personally made the decision to terminate Muscat's employment three years ago, before the 2022 general election. He elaborated that in doing so, he chose not to wait for any report to be concluded by the Standards Commissioner before coming to a decision.

"I felt that it was the decision I had to take, and so I did," he said.

Prime Minister Abela said that the Standards Commissioner's report does not outline a case of a "phantom job." He said that he wished for this distinction to be made - that Muscat had fulfilled all her working hours during her time of employment - in order to distance this case from "existing precedents."

In this regard, the Prime Minister remained firm that "the present circumstances do not merit the removal of ministerial positions." However, with the next stage in this case pending action by the Parliamentary Committee on Standards in Public Life, according to PM Abela, he will wait for it to take its own decision.

"This is not a case of a person who did not go to work, but a person who worked all her working hours in the workplace, with the Maltese government," Abela said.

The Prime Minister remarked that even though Muscat was transferred from the Ministry for Tourism to the Ministry for Gozo, and was, at a point, "being loaned" to do work for the Ministry for Tourism, both of these ministries and the concerned ministers fall under the same government.

Abela also stated that while her job title said one thing, "the work she was doing was along the nature of a personal assistant."

He said that at the time of her removal, the Opposition had begun a rhetoric that he, as Prime Minister, was sacking government workers while possibly not fully grasping the real reasons as to why these decisions were made.

The next phase in this ordeal now sits in the hands of the Parliamentary Committee on Standards in Public Life. After publishing the Standards Commissioner's report in its first sitting, the second stage is to decide whether or not it should adopt the report and take up its recommendations. If this step is taken, then the following step would be to establish what sanctions the two ministers must face for the ethics breach.

He said that the Committee would also need to decide on the nature of the sanctions taken, which could vary in their weight from forcing a public apology, to a warning, to other forms.

The Prime Minister was also asked to comment on the news that veteran police officer and former police superintendent, Maurice Curmi, is suing Prime Minister Abela with claims that his dismissal for alleged ethical breaches was unlawful and discriminatory. Represented by lawyer Jason Azzopardi, Curmi is contrasting his treatment with the leniency shown to Minister Bartolo and Minister Camilleri, who were both let off the hook for misusing public funds.

In his brisk response, Abela said that Curmi and his lawyer, Jason Azzopardi, are "the last people who should have anything to say about ethics."