Chamber and committees

We are coming to the end. I will bring in Mark Griffin—although I think that we have touched quite a lot on the area that he is going to bring up—and then we will go back around and find out whether there is anything else that witnesses think we need to hear about. I am giving you all a little alert about that.

I am interested in how the housing needs and demands assessment works for rural areas. I am also interested in hearing about an upcoming asset transfer review. I spoke with one of Ailsa Raeburn’s colleagues, Carey Doyle, who mentioned the need for a coherent framework for all the tools for communities. It would be interesting to hear a little bit about that, and about the difficulties relating to the fact that communities need to be able to look at and read legislation to understand what they are supposed to be doing. I would like to know whether we can make that easier. Those are just a few areas, and witnesses might want to talk about other things that we have not gone into at all, but I want to give them an opportunity to talk about such things.

Does anyone have anything else that they think that we need to cover? I realise that there is a whole other topic that we could be talking about, which is the challenge of retrofitting. I will not open up that topic, but we have touched a little on areas such as the shortages of the supply of people who have traditional building skills. Is there anything else that you think needs to be highlighted before we close the meeting?

Could local authorities play more of that kind of supporting role?

Thanks. Does anybody else want to come in with a final point?

Thank you for your opening comments. They were very helpful and they form a useful starting point. I will now bring in Miles Briggs, who has a number of questions.

You say that you have been asking for that for a long time. Do you mean before the money was in place, or have you been asking for the £25 million and the criteria for that to be opened up since the fund was announced? It was announced a year or so ago.

That story is certainly one that I have heard across the Highlands and Islands.

You said that we need to co-ordinate that. I am paraphrasing you, but you used the word “we”. Who is we in that case? Does the Scottish Government need to take that on or would it be HIE? I am sorry to throw work at your door, but who is we?

I will bring in Pam Gosal now. If anyone has anything to add, they are welcome to tuck their comments into their responses to the next questions.

I do, and I might also stray there. Elspeth, it is interesting to hear your concerns about the marine directorate and its capacity to robustly monitor the data. I would be interested in hearing your—and, possibly, Helen McLachlan’s—thoughts around the idea of the data that is generated from REM systems being shared. For example, Peru, in 2018, became the second country in the world to share all of its VMS data.