Chamber and committees

Jackie Dunbar has some questions.

I just want to get to the bottom of that. Are you undertaking to write to the committee with an answer to the specific question on the effect of the pausing of the scheme?

Thank you. I will bring in Mark Ruskell, briefly.

I think that the deputy convener wants to come in.

Thank you very much.

Before we go any further, I will check whether there are any declarations of interests.

Silke, now is your moment, if Gail lets you in.

I have a quick question about that. I have noticed that it has been said a couple of times during the meeting that the bus services in urban areas can be as good as you like, but if people who live in rural areas cannot get into the urban areas, urban services are pretty much useless to them. How are we going to take the rural areas along with the ambition if they lack the services?

Thank you very much. In that case, the next questions will come from Mark Ruskell.

Before we move on, Silke Isbrand wants to add to that.

I did some figures across Highland—60 per cent of the houses do not meet energy performance certificate C standard. If you do a back-of-a-fag-packet calculation—which I am not in favour of—it comes out at about £350 million to get the houses that are below EPC C up to that standard, which is a huge cost. If you put that out across the whole of Scotland, across all the local authorities, the costs will be eye-watering. From the committee’s point of view, it is about keeping a handle on that.

Gail, do you think that COSLA will be able to give us an indication of the costs? We know the size of the problem, but surely we cannot fix it until we know the size of the costs.