Ie. drallon. Do that, we will consider that again today. Are we agreed to take item 7 in private? We are agreed. We now move on to agenda item 2, which is consideration of a draft strategy instrument, the renewable obligation Scotland amendment order 2023. I would like to welcome, Michael Matheson, the cabinet secretary for net se Engagement Energy, and transport. Thank you for joining us today. I would also like to welcome Aiden McCray, the energy policy officer and Robert Martin, the team leader for the electricity security, both of whom are from the Scottish Government. The instrument is laid under the affirmative procedure, which means that the Parliament must approve it before it comes into force. Following this evidence session, the committee will be invited at the next agenda item to consider a motion to approve the instrument. Just to remind everyone that officials can speak under this item, but not under the next item. I would now like to invite the cabinet secretary to make a short opening statement. The order under consideration today is a minor amendment to the Renewables Obligations Scotland order 2009. Before moving on to the amendment, it may be helpful to provide some background to the scheme itself. The Renewables Obligations scheme was introduced in 2002 to support renewable electricity generation projects. Equivalent schemes are in place in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, managed under separate legislation. All three UK schemes are administered by Ofgem and throughout its existence, the Scottish obligations have remained largely aligned with the England and Wales scheme. The scheme closed to a new generation capacity across the UK in 2017, but will remain operational until 2037. 565 existing generators are accredited under the scheme, accounting for 8.8 gigawatts of renewables capacity in Scotland. The obligation requires electricity suppliers to source a percentage of the electricity they supply from renewable sources. Accredited renewable generators are awarded certificates according to their output per megawatt hour, which are then sold to suppliers. That incentivises renewable generation by providing projects with revenue in addition to the wholesale energy price. Electricity suppliers fulfil their obligation by providing the required number of certificates to Ofgem in proportion to the amount of electricity that they have sold. Alternatively, they can make a fixed payment into a bio-fund at a higher price than procuring certificates typically requires. The fund is then recycled back to suppliers who did provide certificates to Ofgem. However, when some suppliers fail to meet their obligations, a shortfall on the fund is created, reducing the value of any recycled payments. A mutualisation mechanism exists within the scheme to prevent excessive shortfalls. If the shortfall exceeds a certain threshold, existing suppliers are required to pay the unmet obligations of suppliers who did not meet their obligations. In each of the past five years, mutualisation has been triggered due to an increasing number of suppliers defaulting on their obligations. The amendment under consideration will alter how the mutualisation threshold is determined under article 48 of the Renewable Obligation, Scotland Order 2009. The mutualisation threshold has failed to keep pace with the growth in the scheme and proportionality. It is now considerably smaller than when it was first introduced. The aim of this amendment is to better protect customers by restoring the balance of risk between generators and suppliers. As the cost of the scheme to suppliers is passed on to consumers in their energy bills, any increased costs associated with mutualisation are passed on to. The amendment would alter the mutualisation threshold for Scotland from a fixed value of £1.54 million to 1 per cent of the forecast cost of the scheme across the UK. The amendment will restore alignment with the scheme in England and Wales regarding mutualisation, as the UK Government made a parallel amendment in 2021 to move to a variable level of scheme costs. Critically, the amendment will ensure that suppliers and their customers are not more likely to face the costs of mutualisation in Scotland than in England and Wales. Finally, a further provision is included in the proposed SSI, allowing off-gem to publish the mutualisation threshold for the 2023-24 obligation period as soon as is reasonably practicable after 1 April. Ordinarily, it must publish the threshold before the new obligation period starts, but, given that the SSI will not come into force until 31 March, that allows it to publish the threshold later than that. For those reasons that I have said out, I believe that the proposed amendment is necessary and proportionate. Of course, before we move on to the debate, I am more than happy to answer any questions that members may have. Thank you, cabinet secretary. Before I open it up, I have a quick question for you. You said that this has come about because of suppliers defaulting. Can you just explain how that comes about and what sort of level that is at? There are broadly three reasons, I would say, for companies defaulting. Greater competition in the marketplace, which resulted alongside greater volatility, which resulted in suppliers dropping out of the market—something that we have discussed here at committee before. The issue of the proportionate size of the mutualisation level has also failed to keep pace with the scale of the way in which the industry is developed. There are also aspects of how the way in which companies pay into the scheme. For example, as it stands at the present moment, some of the default comes about because it is the only paying-an-annual basis that, sometimes after the end of the financial year—one of the things that Ofgem is looking to do is to move it to a quarterly basis, where the money is ringfenced during the course of the year so that the company goes out of business at the end of the year, they can still recover that money. There are a variety of factors that result in companies actually dropping out of the marketplace, which then contributes to the overall cost of the mutualisation process and the defaulting of mutualisation. That is why, over the past five years, given the volatility and greater competition, we have saw a significant increase in the need for mutualisation to be exercised. My slight concern on what you have just said is that those people are doing everything correct or that companies that are doing everything correct are picking up to the tab for those people that have defaulted. I am just trying to get my brain round whether that is the right way. Are you comfortable that that is the right way for those people or those companies that are buying in by the scheme and doing everything as they should to pick up the can for those that do not? The scheme is always designed on that basis. However, I think that there is a much more deep-rooted issue here. Again, something that we have covered at this committee before, and that is the way in which companies and particularly suppliers have been able to enter into the market without the necessary financial protections in place, which then has had all the consumable problems that we have had with higher costs and energy prices over the course of the past 18 months in particular. You know that Ofgem are now carrying out a piece of work in looking at how they can put further protections in place to reduce the risk of companies falling out of the market so quickly and also that there is greater financial protections in there. In the end, the consumer ends up picking up all the costs associated with that. What a threshold will do is that it will help to make sure that there is actually a fairer way in which the mutualisation process is operating, which means that those who are meeting their obligations are not being unfairly penalised because of other operators who do not meet their obligations. Are there any other questions? Goodness, you are getting an easy ride there, cabinet secretary. That's a change. I wouldn't want to start, president. Moving on to agenda item 3, if I may, this is the formal consideration of motion S6M-07677, calling for the committee to recommend approval of the Renewable Obligations Scotland amendment order 2023. Cabinet secretary, can I ask you to move the motion and if you feel necessary to speak to the motion? Thank you. Are there any contributions from members? As there are no contributions, you don't need to sum up as it were, so we'll move straight on to the question that motion S6M-07677, in the name of Michael Matheson, be approved. Are we all agreed? We are agreed. Therefore, the committee will report the outcome of this instrument in due course, and I invite committee members pleased to delegate authority to me as convener to finalise the report for publication. Are you happy to do that, committee? Good, thank you. Thank you, cabinet secretary, and thank you to your officials who attended but weren't put under any pressure. I'm going to suspend the meeting to prepare for our next agenda item. Welcome back to everyone. Our next item is an evidence session as part of our inquiry into a modern and sustainable ferry service for Scotland. I refer members to the papers for this item. This is our 11th evidence session as part of our inquiry. Our first panel today will hear from the Canadian Maritime Assets Limited, the assets owner for Scotland, some of Scotland's ports and the Scotland's vessels, and a company owned by the Scottish Government. On behalf of the committee, I'm pleased to welcome Moor Edmund Neill, who's the chair, Kevin Hobbs, the chief executive, Jim Anderson, director of vessels and Ramsey Muirhead, the director of port infrastructure and planning. Thank you for accepting our invitation and we're very pleased to have you here. Before we begin on questions, Kevin, you want to make a brief opening statement. Is that actually Moor Ag? Moor Ag, you are going to make a brief opening statement. I am indeed, thank you very much, and good morning everyone. Thank you very much to the committee for inviting us to give evidence to you this morning. I'm Moor Ag McNeill, I have been a non-executive director of Seamall for nearly nine years and I'm currently the chair of the Seamall board. I'm a lawyer by profession and it's about my career specialising in corporate law as a partner in one of Scotland's largest law firms. The last seven years of my career was spent with four ports as general counsel and I recently stepped down as vice chair of Aberdeen harbour board after serving on the board for nine years. With me today are three of Seamall's executive directors all have significant experience in their specialist professional fields. Kevin Hobbs, a chief exec, has been with Seamall for seven years and has a total of 35 years experience in shipping in the ports industry. Ramsay Muirhead is our director of port infrastructure and planning. He's been in Seamall for 14 years and has 26 years experience in civil engineering. Finally, Jim Anderson is our director of vessels and he has 41 years in ship building and vessel design and has spent the last 14 years at Seamall. Seamall has 47 full-time staff and whilst we are responsible for the asset base that supports both the Northern Isles and the Clyde and Hebrides services, we work alongside internationally recognised naval architects, civil engineering and building and property consultants. We engage these consultants so that they can complement our professional staff and also they have the experience to provide first-class solutions alongside the Seamall team. As the business owned by the Scottish ministers, we are committed to achieving net zero by 2045. We are on a journey along with the wider industry to achieve net zero throughout our asset portfolio. We are adopting best practice in both vessel design and also within our port infrastructure. The shipping and port industry does not have all the answers to achieving net zero at this point in time but significant strides are being taken by Seamall regarding reduction in carbon emissions and particulates on vessels and also the carbon footprint of our ports. The team is here to provide much more detail about that as we can in relation to our journey to net zero. We are involved in a number of projects and groups both internationally as well as within Scotland looking at future fuels alongside carbon reduction. You have already heard from members of councils regarding the close and cooperative working relationships that we have with them. Our intention today is to look forward and show you why we are confident that we can achieve net zero within the significant capital provided by the Scottish Government, which now stands at around £700 million for the five-year period from 2021-22 to 2025-26. There has been a significant number of witnesses called to give evidence and a number of incorrect statements have been made which we wish to make correct on the record today. The Seamall team comprises experts in the appropriate disciplines and the team has all of the skills and competences required within the business to support the existing and future ports and vessels. Our senior professionals all worked in the private sector for many years prior to joining Seamall and bring vast experience to the business and to Scotland in support of the Clyde and Hebrides and Northern Isles Networks. We are neither a quango nor a group of amateurs. A small number of witnesses to those hearings have chosen to oversimplify the complexity of the decision-making process without, in our view, having the necessary knowledge or experience. We work closely with the operators of the Clyde and Hebrides services and the operators of the Northern Isles service and Transport Scotland regarding the future vessel requirements and port infrastructure requirements. We also consult widely with stakeholders including ferry users. Every new vessel that is proposed commences with a statement of requirements from the operators and that forms the overarching basis of the vessel design. Equally, this applies to our port developments. We have the experts in both areas here to talk through these processes in more detail. In that regard, we are aware that it has also been stated that it was the choice of Seamall to build geofuil vessels. That is not correct. CalMac produced a statement of requirements that explicitly requested geofuil capable of using marine gas oil and liquid natural gas. The project at that time was known as Super Eco 1000. There were discussions around LNG, which, as the committee members will be aware, is a transition fuel, but the operator maintained that it was an integral part of decarbonisation. Finally, I would like to extend an open invitation to members of the committee to visit our offices in Port Glasgow to see for yourselves the work that we do and to give you the opportunity to meet the wider Seamall team. I am very proud to say that several of our team joined us as graduates from Scottish universities because we believe in growing our own talent. Thank you again for allowing me to make an opening statement. We will do our best to answer all your questions this morning as fully as possible. It would be helpful, and I would be extremely grateful if those questions could at first be addressed to Kevin. Kevin will make sure that he hands over the appropriate member of the team to answer as fully as we can. Can I just say that to members, if you want to ask a question directly to an individual, it is absolutely appropriate that you do that. If the individual or if one of you wants to come in, if you indicate with your hand, I will bring you in as best I can. I want this to be as free-flowing as possible to allow members to ask questions to the people they think most appropriate to do it. I am not overriding you, Morag. I am just giving some guidance to committee members. If I start wagging my pen at you, which is a Christine Graham trick, it means that I want you to try and keep your answer a little bit shorter on the basis that we have got quite a lot of questions to come. It has never flown out of my fingers when I have been wagging it before, but you will get the indication rather than just telling you to end, which I do not think is helpful. The first question will come from the deputy convener, Fiona Hyslop. Thank you very much for joining us this morning. This inquiry is future facing. It is to help inform the islands connectivity plan that is due. The first question that I want to ask is what role did CMAL play in project net tune? If you can maybe explore a bit more the issues that affected you in project net tune. I think I'll take that one if that's okay. We were involved in project net tune. I think it was described quite adequately last week by both Robbie Drummond and by Stuart Garrett. We were involved from the outset. Obviously, we met on a number of occasions with Transport Scotland, with Circo and with CalMac in relation to the project net tune scope. We also had a number of meetings with Ernst and Young, one-on-one company-to-company, but we also then came back together at the end of that and obviously got some output from them and sense checking as to whether the results that they come up with made sense. Obviously, there was a very wide range of options and we really see it as an optioneering paper, as opposed to something that is very, very defined. You will be aware that there were 11 different options, some of which have already been discounted by Scottish Government. Then, just exploring what might happen. I don't want to put you into difficult position, but I think it would be helpful for the committee to understand if there was to be a merger between CMAL and CalMac ferries, what would be the benefits and what would be the disbenefits, because that would help us to understand some of the issues about that relationship, but also what future relationship might be. There are many models and there are many ferry companies out there that are fully integrated. Obviously, CMAL was born of European legislation. One of the questions about merging the companies again is one that revolves around independence as well, because independence seems to come potentially with going back into Europe at which point in time you could re-merge the companies, but you might have to tear them apart again. We are quite agnostic as to how it works. What we really want to see is the best results that we can possibly get for Scotland PLC in terms of the output of the ferry renewal programme and the port renewal programme for looking at it from an asset base. Maybe explore what you mean by independence, independence from whom to deliver what? I was talking about Scottish independence from the United Kingdom. I think that there are pros and cons really at the end of the day in relation to merging the companies. We do work closely together. It has been said by some people that we do not work closely together. There is barely a day that goes by where we do not work with the shifts operator and the nifts operator, so to say that we are disjointed in the way that some people have said it is totally incorrect. Maybe one could even say that it is mischief making. We have not got a problem with merging, but equally I have worked for many, many years in integrated ferry companies and what tends to happen is that if there is a crisis everybody gets sucked into the middle to deal with that crisis. One of the unique things about CMAL is that we do not get involved in the day-to-day operations, so we can really 100 per cent concentrate on strategy, the asset base and the such like. We see our position currently as being quite positive. Just developing that a bit further in terms of that importance of strategic focus, there is also Transport Scotland in the mix. Therefore, you have got this triangle, which you will obviously know from the evidence that we have had, can be seen to be over complicated. Therefore, the issue would be if CMAL and CAMAC came together, does that put a greatest onus on Transport Scotland to have the expertise to necessarily have the accountability relationship or is there an issue where, how does that work and is the remoteness of Transport Scotland potentially a problem if there was to be a murder? I do not see that they are remote at the moment and they certainly would not be in the future.  We are the asset owners of ports and vessels and then you have two operators under public contract, one of which is CAMAC and one of which is Circo Northland. I do not really see it as being that complicated, so people can make it complicated but it is really quite straightforward. If I understand you correctly in your original reference to independence, obviously there is a view from the Scottish Government to try and stay aligned with EU regulations as much as possible. Therefore, your indication is that one eye should be put on to how aligned and keeping pace with EU regulations might be now. I know because I was here at the time originally when the companies were set up as they are currently are and that was because of a concern but it was a disputed concern at that time about European regulations, so I suppose that is a bit you are suggesting needs to be weighed up in some of this. Yeah, absolutely. Look, do not get me wrong, is what we have today absolutely perfect? No. Can improvements be made? Have improvements been made? The answer to that is yes. What improvements can be made? That is what I was trying to tease out from there. Well, I think that sometimes we are not as joined up as maybe we ought to be. Maybe I'll pass on to Jim very briefly and maybe explain how we go about building vessels. Okay, I can do that. As hopefully most of the committee are aware, there's a number of new vessel projects that we've got and I invite you to look at our website that will give you that a big range that we're working on and certainly what I've done since I became director of vessels in 2016 is I've made sure that there's better governance around everything that was done done beforehand. So I've now got working groups that are set up that meet regularly, that are meeting daily, that discuss all aspects for a I'm talking mainly about vessels here so when we start off what we're looking at so we have Transport Scotland as part of the team, the working group that I chair, looking at policy, looking at strategy. We have representatives from CalMac, looking at forecast demands, what type of vessels do we need and so on. But the big thing that I've put in place with this as well is we then have the specialists who operate the ships involved in these projects as well. We're speaking to the masters, we're speaking to the retail department, we're speaking to the chief engineers so that everyone knows what is going on with these projects, so this isn't about a whole lot of people sitting in offices and delivering ships to people who've got to crew these ships so there's so much work that's, this is a team and it's a real good team effort that actually starts from right. What is it we need to do, what do we need to look to in the future for 2035 and beyond and everyone sits together and the governance and the level of assurance that we've now got for these projects is at a different level from anything that we've had previously. Okay, and finally, my final question is to ask how is Seymal preparing for the end of the current Clyde and Hebrides ferry service contract in October 2024, which is only 18 months away? Yeah, 100% correct, it is 18 months away. We do not own that contract as such but we have got a harbour operating agreement so maybe Ramsey you'd like to explain what that harbour operating agreement looks like and what we need to do in preparation. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, so the harbour operating agreement is a contract directly from us to CalMacferries as the harbour operator. It runs back to back with the CHIFS contract and in preparation for the end of this contract and the presumed next CHIFS 3 as it will be the harbour operating agreement we are looking at and we work with CalMac literally on a daily basis to look at how that can be improved and that's from both sides so we have already started reviewing the harbour operating agreement for what will be presumably another tender coming. I think it works very well at the moment the harbour operating agreement so we have CalMac staff on the ports that operate the ports on behalf of CMAL across our 26 ports on the network. Thanks for that. I just want to go back to a question that you answered, Kevin, that you basically feel the system works fairly well. You will have read the construction and procurement of ferry vessels in Scotland report, which I guess you agreed with in principle, did you? Yes. Okay, so I'm now confused by your answer then. So what the committee said in that, it was a cluttered decision making process, lax transparency, varying degrees of failure, CMAL failed to discharge their respective responsibility effectively, the experience of the contracts 801 and 802, exposed serious failures in the tripart agreement and therefore needs the routine branch overhaul. So basically what the committee said was CMAL failed, but in the way forward you're saying it's fine, there's no problem, let's just crack on. Is that what you're saying? Because if that is what you're saying, I am seriously concerned for ferry procurement in Scotland. What we're actually saying is that, as Jim has described and Ramsey has described as well, ultimately we are improving things day by day and we will continue to do so. Looking back in history, was it perfect? No, it wasn't. Any report that comes out, we look at it, there are lessons learned and we improve and that's what any business ought to do. Well, I understand that but creeping forward is not what the committee recommended and what we, the rec committee, what we're charged with doing is trying to find out a way to take it forward. The final part of that paragraph, which I'm sure you know and I know the report fairly well, I would have to say, is that there should be scope for streamline and simplified decision making structures by emerging or abolishing certain of them. That means that CMAW, without putting too much final point according to that committee, should be no longer. You challenge that. Yes. And on the basis of making creeping changes, that's the only reason you're challenging it, is it? We're not making creeping changes. That's your word, it's not mine. Well, are they Bruton branch? Bruton branch suggests a massive change. Well, obviously massive change hasn't happened but the project next year might look at that. I'll come back to that. There's a lot of all of this that we read in the press, in the news, in committee aware of, in the whole country's aware of. It's all centered around 801 and 802 and it really, really is. I'm still not sure that everybody's got all the facts of 801 and 802 and why there's problems. You know, CMAW have been labelled with, you know, at the root of all that and it's absolutely not the case. You know, CMAW have got a history of delivering vessels. We've done it since I've been in the committee since 2009. We're now moving forward with another four vessels at another seven but for whatever reason we're tired with the 801 and 802 brush as being something has to change because of the problems at the fair distance ship we have and absolutely, I'm the only person that's been here ever present, sorry, and the chair and I can tell this committee right now and others that it is not the case. But, Jim, I understand why you want to disassociate CMAW from 801 and 802. I understand why you want to do that. Sorry, I didn't interrupt you so please do not interrupt me because that will not start the surf on the right foot. What I'm saying is is Transport Scotland and CMAW applied inadequate due diligence to scrutinising signing of the process in sufficient due diligence. These are all words in here and where we are we're on a project that cost £97 million was due to cost and it's probably going to end up costing half a billion pounds. Forgive me if I don't understand why the people of Scotland shouldn't find that of due concern when you were overseeing the contract as an organisation. Explain to me why they shouldn't. I did think that this meeting and committee was going to be a bit forward looking issues, but the point that I would like to make is the procurement of the current vessel shows that we have made great strides and not creeping changes in how we procure vessels. I don't think that you could challenge the manner in which the four large vessels have now been procured. I totally agree with you and one of the things that the report that says is about transparency. So we know some of the vessels, two of the vessels are going to cost £111 million. I would like to know for example have you addressed the issue of stage payments, have you addressed all the other issues that were made in the rec report because when you asked for that information we're told that it's commercially sensitive and we can't have it. So it is very difficult for people to scrutinise it and understand there's change. Maybe we should leave that. But looking forward I would say is about learning from history so you don't repeat the same mistake. I think we have learned from history, we have not repeated the same mistakes and I think that that will be clear in terms of the procurement of not just the large vessels but when we come on to talk about the small vessel replacement plan which I hope we will get on to at some point in this session. That will be up to committee members. I'm going to come to Mark Ruskell now. So looking again at the future I'm interested to know what role CMAL's played in relation to the development of the island's connectivity plan. So if you could explain exactly what your involvement has been throughout the stages of that development that would be very good. Yeah I guess that's for me. Again we've been working very very closely with Transport Scotland on the island connectivity plan certainly looking at the overarching requirement to build ferries and to replace the ageing ports. We have been front and centre of that with Transport Scotland and trying to work out what the best way forward is for the islands. Whenever we initiate a new project we do an island impact assessment and also we do very considerable stakeholder engagement each and every time that we get involved. Okay so can you just explain what that involvement has actually been with Transport Scotland? We're obviously the asset owners so what we're looking at on almost a daily basis is what actually needs to happen in terms of replacing the assets because the assets are front and centre with this so I think is everybody's aware you know there have been quite a number of issues around the age of the fleet and the replacement of the fleet and it's really looking at what we have to do in the future to get that back on an even keel. As it stands at the moment the vessels on the northern isle services are about 21 years old our desire would be for them to be 15 years old. On the west coast it's about 24 and a half years old again we would desire for them to be 15 years old. We're looking at obviously climate change issues in relation to in relation to ports so Ramsey can explain that later on if you care to ask a question but broadly we are the people that are sitting down with Transport Scotland looking at what needs to happen to basically make the services for the island communities a lot more resilient than they are. Okay so it's primarily about the assets then so you wouldn't you wouldn't pass comment on the viability of fixed links for example or any other issues that are that are relevant to connectivity for islands it's just about the ferries and not for you know not for us I mean we're aware of some of the issues around fixed links we know that there has been discussions around tunnels we know there's been discussions around you know around bridges etc etc but those are also very very long-term ambitions really you know none of these projects can be turned around really really quickly you know there is a ferry service there are ports ferries go from A to B you know generally very successfully and if there is a desire as there was a number of years ago you know to connect an island with a bridge such as a sky bridge then you know absolutely there's no there's no problem as far as we're concerned okay right okay okay thanks very much Liam I think you've got some questions yes thank you convener good morning panel before I come to a substantive question I just wonder if you might since the convener was asking about procurement just help me with I put in a question to the transport minister in January which he was answered somewhat cryptically and I just wonder if I can get a clear answer from you Kevin Hobbs what I asked was with regard to the contract with CEMRE for the two ferries to serve the island route in Turkey I just asked whether there were any clauses in there stipulating that Scottish UK EU or other European businesses should form part of the supply chain where possible could you help me with the answer to that no there wasn't okay thank you the substantive question I have at this stage convener transport Scotland's consultation on the long-term plan for vessels and ports on the Clyde and Hebrides and Northern Isles network states quote we will reduce the average age of the fleet to around 15 years old by the end of the decade how does CML intend to achieve that particularly given the chair's comments earlier that it's for the operator to dictate this spec well I mean basically what we what we look at all the time is the age of the fleet what needs to be replaced and that also has an element of decarbonisation it comes into it because it's fairly obvious at the moment that the older vessels are traditionally propelled so we we did make some progress back in 2013 14 and 16 in relation to the world's first diesel electric hybrids but but broadly where we're going with this at the moment is is we speak to the operators regularly we have a plan again you can look at our website if you want to it's the three-year plan there's a 10-year plan and during that 10-year plan and I'll hand over to Jim now but you know there is 21 vessels going to be replaced now that's over a 10-year period at the moment we only have an agreement for the funding for five years and that five years is made up of a multiplicity of projects but some of them are ports some of them relate to the operators some of them relate to new vessels but but you know in in in the broad brush and Jim can explain in more detail we need to build six new major vessels in addition to 801 and 802 currently there are 11 so that basically is is eight new ones out of the 11 we intend to build 10 small vessel replacements at the moment we have 18 small vessels so that's over half of them there are three vessels which we don't have in our portfolio at the moment which is the Gwyrwch, Denun, Kilgregen vessels and the intention is to build replacements for them as well two of those currently around by David McBrain which is the owner of CalMac and one of them is chartered in so we have 32 vessels on the on the west coast currently and we intend to replace 21 of them so that's that 60 percent replacement Jim do you want to I think you've covered it Kevin you know with the numbers I was probably just thinking over the same numbers but we've got the plans we've got the four ships that are under construction at the Gemry shipyard in Turkey small vessel replacement programme repeating what Kevin said seven just about finished with the the conceptual side of that hopefully ready to go to procurement you know in the next financial year and we'll follow on with all these other replacement programmes so it's you know pretty healthy so given that then the question begged is simply will transport scottans uh statement to reduce the average age of fleet 15 years old by the end of the decade be realised particularly given the funding situation that you alluded to Kevin yeah we believe so I mean we we were working very closely with transport Scotland and the Scottish government in relation to the 580 million five-year package obviously five years is not 10 years but we're already talking about what the next five years might look like so that will be 26 27 to 31 32 so so if if you look at that we haven't we haven't got a commitment for that yet um but the 580 will start that process and start it very substantially as we say four four new vessels in Turkey already we should be out to procurement by mid year for seven of the 10 small vessel replacements and by the end of the year for the guruk denuncill cregan vessels as well so you know all of all of those are heading in the right direction and provided the next five year package of funding comes along and it doesn't fall away then we are confident that we will get below 15 years as an average age and just for completeness then so how much is it going to cost how much is the total funding required to achieve what it sounds like you're going to try to it's quite difficult to predict at the moment because of the inflationary figures which we've had when we last looked at it properly which was a basically this time last year trying to predict we had an overall spend across the northern ars for the ships and the western ars for the ships and the ports of about 1.4 billion however that was premised on a two or three percent inflation rate at the time so you know it's absolutely true to say to be transparent that with 10 percent inflation we can't buy as much as we thought we were going to buy having said that the original 580 has been added to late last year by another 115 to allow four vessels to be built in Turkey not to so you know we have an open conversation we have an open dialogue and the government are listening and that is witnessed by the fact that we've got another 115 so that's taken us up to 695 probably 700 million which has been mentioned before understand continue to look for second hand tonnage as well which is obviously another method of bringing down the age of the fleet understand thank you very much thank you uh Jackie thank you convener and good morning panel during the inquiry so far we've been hearing concerns from commuters and the communities regarding the reliability and the availability of vessels which are currently serving the Clyde and Hebrides routes so can you briefly explain to me what Seymal are doing in the short term to improve this i'll just say a couple of words and hand over to Jim but basically we have we have a number of things going on here we are not responsible for the repair and maintenance in the dry docking of the ships without getting too technical we effectively have a bareboat charter agreement a fleet agreement so what does that mean now sorry what does that mean it basically means that you get the ship it doesn't come with the people we don't pay for the fuel so effectively it is the asset so the asset is handed over to the operator the operator and operates it putting crew on putting fuel on lubricating oil etc etc um so that that is what that's that's what happens however um we are very aware of the resilience issues we're very aware that we haven't got an average age of fleet of 15 years it's as I said earlier on it's about 24 and a half at the moment which is not where we would ideally like to be however we have a package of funding called upgrades and resilience which has been agreed with our Scottish Government and maybe Jim you want to want to talk about what that looks like on an annual basis okay we're currently spending about 8.5 million across the fleet on upgrades and resilience projects as we call them so that this is looking at you know areas of obsolescence on board the ship whereby we can't get spares and so on so these are all ways of looking at increasing the reliability of the vessels if I can take what we're doing in the future and what's happening over in the new ships that we've now put in place for these ships that we've now got spare we've got a spare working engine on board the ship typically on the ferries we've got two main engines if we lose a main engine then you know the ship gets taken out of service with the new vessels it will be a diesel electric propulsion system so we'll have four main engines and one is effectively a standby machine so that allows in the event of an engine to be out of service you've got a spare engine that you can use it also allows you to carry out maintenance on board the ship as well so these are all ways we're looking at increasing the reliability of the future fleet and what we've also done as well for these four ships as well we've increased the capability of the propulsion system as well from its speed of response from a stern from a head to a stern so all these things are looking at really increasing the reliability we call it the station holding when we talk about the propulsion so these are all features that we're putting in spare pumps and so on and so on and so on so there's a lot of work being done in that regard with improving reliability for the future fleet okay so the extra engine that you're speaking about is that instead of maybe having like a relief vessel or is or do you have relief vessels well that will be the intention once we've had this investment and the new ships in the fleet you know there'll be you know ships that can then be used as a relief or a standby vessel obviously there need to be discussion about that and how that's costied and so on and funded but yes and do you have a relief vessel just now and so there's nothing short short short term no there isn't a relief vessel i mean basically as new vessels and that there hasn't been enough of them to be frank certainly major vessels and smaller vessels coming along but every time a new vessel has come along there is an opportunity to have a relief vessel but the strategic and policy decisions that have been made around that has been to actually deploy permanently the what could have been a relief vessel on a permanent route so you will probably know that you know there was some improvements to service by having a Campbell town route there was Malaglock Boysdale there was also the daily service that was created to go to to Barra now that's that's absolutely great for those islands but every single time a new vessel has come along there has been new routes and what we're saying to Scottish Government very very clearly is as we get new vessels now certainly for the balance of this decade we believe there needs to be a vessel in hot layup because at the moment in the summer and in the winter with everything deployed the minute that you get a resilience issue so a breakdown or a vessel is delayed in dry dock as it currently stands then basically you are robbing Peter to pay poor so what you're looking at on the major vessel side is any island that's got two vessels deployed so Aaron has two, Mull has two you're basically taking one of those away to plug the gap so so what we're saying very clearly to government for the future is please please have a resilience vessel does that need to be there forever my answer is no that is not normal ferry practice however we need to get below an average age of 15 years to enable us to have the confidence that there doesn't need to be a resilience vessel in the fleet as Kevin said having a vessel in hot layup is absolutely you know what we would be looking for in the short term but that has a cost implication that has to be understood thank you Jackie is at you complete thank you can i thank you for the submission that you put forward on the 21st of February which is decarbonising Scotland's ferries on the route to net zero paper which was was useful my question to you is do you believe that the Scottish government's ferry services can be carbon neutral by 2045 particularly in light of the fact that seamal is currently purchasing full marine oil powered vessels with an expected lifespan of 30 years and on the basis that we heard from Norway that you can't change fuels midway through a vessel's life it's it's built their opinion was it was built with that fuel that's what you left with so that's the question i don't know is that you jim okay i can take that can be enough the market isn't quite there when we're looking at the alternative fuels i've actually got some figures with us here at the moment when we take the percentage of ships in operation you know almost 99 percent of ships in operation are on conventional fuels and of the number of ships 1300 1349 are on some kind of alternative fuels when we look at the likes of methanol ammonia which we hear a lot about they're not there in the market yet at all the major engine manufacturers are working towards you know getting these out into the market in the next few years there's lots of other challenges around not just the engine technology but on the supply of the fuel that's another big aspect of this for looking towards methanol in the future hydrogen in the future there's all these other challenges of where is the fuel coming from and added to that there's a safety in the regulatory part of all this as well which isn't quite defined but we keep you know we know what the market's doing we're looking at this constantly and trying to be in a position that we're ready for it the ships the four ships are under construction at the moment that are under contract at the moment they are diesel electric hybrid systems they have what we call this DC grid and what the DC grid does it allows for the future to enable us to look at future enhancements and advancements in battery technology makes it easier to connect we can look at fuel cells because these devices are all providing DC electricity so we'll put that all in place that we've got this DC grid so it's all small stepping stones to to be in a place to be in the future but at the moment the the the market is not there with the likes of ammonia and methanol and hydrogen but it's something we are directly involved in and we've got a good understanding of you know what's happening I think it's sorry just to just to sort of finish that off for the small ferry fleet in Scotland then there is a solution which is really batteries so it's plugging in overnight charging up the batteries and using those batteries for propulsion during the day it's the larger vessels which are the real challenge and that's not just a challenge to sea mal and Scotland it's a challenge to the whole world shipping and globally has said that it will decarbonise completely by 2050 so there's a huge amount of work going on with all the manufacturers of engines and everything associated with ships to get to that point of zero carbon so if we were to ask us to predict when there might be a solution for bigger ships probably the mid 2030s now the problem that we have is we just cannot wait you know if we look at the mid 2030s which is 10 years hence would we want to be running around with an average age of 35 years old the answer is absolutely not so we have to do something which is why we're building the foreign turkey okay so just on the basis of what you've just said I'm told that the yard building 801 and 802 have questioned whether it's actually sensible to commission lng and they've been instructed that they've got to do it because that's what the commitment was do you think lng was a mistake and isn't going to be a fuel that we're going to use in future or should be using in future for our ferries given the fact that it's difficult to get comes from kent i think up in a lorry and we need special storage is that going to be a fuel of the past rather than the fuel of the future well looking at some of the numbers here you know just looking at the 131349 vessels in the operation with alternative fuels 923 of those are lng the ships 801 and 802 they are dual fuel and so we obviously can operate operate on both and you know we see that lng is a transition fuel there is no doubt about that so will you be commissioning more ships with lng potentially the the core issue for the ships that will serve isla was basically to maximize its dead weight capacity so it's carrying capacity if you have a dual fuel system you're adding a lot of pipe work and an awful lot of weight and it's pure physics and the more weight the ship weight sorry the the heavier the ship is the less cargo you carry so it wasn't that we didn't want lng on those ships although there are some challenges around the size of them and whether there are lng engines it can go in them but notwithstanding that um from from the perspective of let's call it more industrial islands it was absolutely necessary to maximize the dead weight of the ships so in other words their carrying capacity if you have 100 tons worth of tank and all of the pipes that is 100 tons less cargo you carry which is two and a half lorry's worth so you know that's the reason we didn't go for it okay mark i think you had some full up questions on that yeah interesting your point jim i mean you seem to be saying that you're following a market rather than seem out trying to create and lead a new market in in decarbonised technology which i think is is a bit disappointing to hear that can i ask like is it seem out committed to the 2030 target 75 carbon reduction on 1990 levels by 2030 and are all the decisions that have been made on commissioning in perfect alignment with that because if it's not then effectively you're asking another transport sector another part of the economy to pick up the slack on decarbonisation that for whatever reason you feel that you're unable to achieve so what we're clearly saying is that i've mentioned 10 small vessels and i've mentioned the guru at denunck at the kill cragen vessels those are at the smaller end and we've said very very clearly that those will be batteries you will charge them up with green energy we know that energy from the grid despite what people might say is not 100% green but it's getting there as there is the rollout of the scot wind etc etc so you know eventually that will that will be green but what we're clearly saying at the moment is that we are we are doing everything we can to make sure that we decarbonise as quickly as we can and that is not purely on vessels but it's on ports as well are you aligned with that 2030 target yes yes we are but we're waiting for the technology to be available for us to actually achieve it and at the moment in 2023 with the larger vessels there isn't a solution that will get us there with that sector of our portfolio okay but you will be aligned in 2045 is that what you're saying yes right okay thanks mark next question then from Liam Kerr thank you convener a brief preliminary question if i may Kevin Hobbs because there's just something i didn't quite understand from earlier in her opening remarks the chair said that the operator dictates the spec of the vessels but for example we've got a press release from seamal which suggests we are considering a catamaran for a particular root and earlier on the chair said we are looking at alternative tonnage so can you just explain to me what is the reality who does dictate what the vessels look like and which vessels actually are ordered it's not really a dictation it's a collaboration so every single vessel whether it's and i think Stuart Garrett explained it quite well last week it starts off with a with the operator statement of requirements and that gives you all of the core metrics that you need to build a future vessel so the length of it the capacity of it the speed it needs to go you know what what type of services you have on board obviously for the northern ars you know when you've got a 14 hour overnight journey that is completely and totally different as you can imagine to you know a one hour journey to Aaron so so that that is that is initiated by the operator we then sit down we understand it we question it sometimes because fairly obviously you know you can't have 100 meters ship and somebody say well we want to put a million cars on it it doesn't work so so so that is it's it's very much sitting down and a collaboration and of course not for getting transport Scotland in terms of its policy lead and the funding of these things you know we have no borrowing powers to build ships i wish we did in some ways because if we did we could have done a lot more a lot sooner but we don't we we get voted loans from the government so so we we work very very closely with the operator and through the various iterations of concept design we will keep the operator completely up to date we have very very regular meetings with them and what comes out at the end of that concept design could be a cataran it could be a monohull it could be a fast ship a slow ship whatever it may be but you know it is not a single company making the decision it is the tripartite working very closely together understand thank you so sticking with that press release i later on it says we will only ever order the vessels best suited to the routes and communities they're intended to serve now in earlier sessions this committee's heard from various communities that or the representation is that seamile is procuring vessels and harbour improvements that appear not to be the best or to accord with certain consultations that have taken place if that's right how come there's a disconnect between seamiles position as stated in that press release for example and what appears to be the perceived reality that's quite difficult to answer because you need to ask those people again you've heard from from various people i think there is a confusion with stakeholder engagement and consultation and getting exactly what you want because we have to unbalance with the partners the operators and the transport scotland decide whether what is being requested is reasonable and sometimes we or transport scotland or the operator simply has to say no you know purely purely on a value for money basis leave alone anything else i mean if somebody comes along and says well you haven't listened to my you know my comments you know i insisted the new brolic term or had gold taps and platinum toilet seats that isn't reasonable so there is it's not the fact there's a disconnect but some people will not accept that what they're asking for what they're requesting is either not value for money it's not reasonable or actually in science it can actually work but there's certainly been a suggestion that some of what's been ordered historically and is going forward is likely to be ordered is not best suited to the particular routes or the particular facilities now it's going to be interesting in your view on that but can you explain to the committee then how do you ensure how will you ensure going forward that whatever is procured whether it be in terms of vessels or harbours are certainly best suited to the particular routes and communities that they're going to serve well that's what we do already people might not like the output of it but we're not i mean look maybe speak to ramsey about about about ports it's not said too much today so um but you know if you look at if you look at future ports ramsey what does what does that look like what what do we do with consultation yeah so i'm i think as excuse me as mentioned earlier we have project working groups which are calmac ourselves in transport scotland we then have reference groups which includes local councils local ferry committees and kind of key stakeholders we also then go out and have lots of public meetings for our port developments and i would say we undertake true consultation it's not just a communication we're not just there to tell and we have many examples where the feedback received has actually gone back into the design current projects we're working on as an example portell and terminal development we went out last summer with two i'd say the preferred options one of them slightly ahead of the other overwhelming feedback was actually for another option we've reviewed that in a lot more detail and actually turns out that that is the better option even things like boat steps when we were rebuilding largs public consultation was we undertook and the feedback was that different sizes of vessels need different types of steps so they were they were put in as part of the project and that was as listening to to what was being told to us. Tim Anderson speak about vessels if i take the two new vessels for isla and the the two further vessels for the waytab and lukmadi lots of consultation in this fact we actually started the project in august 2019 when we when we formally kicked this off so from august 2019 through to what march last year was was that whole period before we even went to contract so there was there was lots of excellent work done there and you know consultation with the communities and the feedback that we've had for those routes that we're serving is that the communities the councils everyone is very very satisfied with these ferries that are coming away just other small notes because we're here at you know the NZ committee as well you know the new vessels that are coming in compared to the vessels that we're replacing you know we're going to have 30% less emissions but at the same time can carry when we're looking at HDVs 40% more HDVs or 30% more cars so we're doing a lot of work there as well with these new vessels although we're not quite there yet with all the technologies so certainly for these these four new vessels which will become standard vessels they've been very very well received and you know i should just go on to your website to see the level of engagement that we've had both during the pandemic when we carried out the live webinars from you know our studies in the house so certainly for those and the next set of engagement we'll have at the moment is for the small vessel replacement programme where in Q2 we'll be going out and visiting all the communities which when we're looking at seven vessels it's like looking at 14 locations so that's going to be in Q2 of next year so certainly what we're doing has been very very well received and what we do is well when we start to look at all these vessels we don't have any preconceived idea of what this hull is going to look like that's what we do and we start looking at hull we look at catamaran hull we look at monohulls and we have to then go through the whole evaluation to then get to the point of which one is going to you know be the most competitive so the what has all carried out? Thank you very quickly. Sorry, I couldn't work out where that was coming from. Sorry, it's an echo in the room. No, no, it was quite spooky actually but I'm now back on track. Thank you. I just say we now have an Islander who sits on our board as a non-executive director and he has had the opportunity to attend some of the public meetings that have been held and he's personally received very good feedback from those who have attended the meetings in relation to the consultation so you know we always look to improve but you know I think we have a good level in engagement and we've had very positive feedback when I was on mull for the Loch Frizzah launch a number of mull residents came up specifically to say to me how much they value the work that Seamall has been doing on mull particularly in getting the Loch Frizzah there as a second vessel. Okay, thank you. Jackie, I think you've got some questions. Yes, I've got another question. The committee has heard from earlier sessions about real concerns about the vehicle capacity and availability of cabins on the north link vessels and also the capacity and availability of freight only vessels. Can I ask what action is being taken to address those concerns? Right, so we're obviously aware that there is a pressure there. Certainly the Northern Isles has been well served with the vessels that they have to date but certainly with the increased economic activity on the islands especially around renewables, fish landings etc that that has become you know an issue for the islanders. As Morag had said earlier on we are tasked also looking at second hand vessels it's not an easy space to be in. In relation to specifically the Northern Isles that's what you're asking about six months, six, seven months ago we put in a formal bid to buy the arrow which is an exact sister of the helir and the hill to say. Unfortunately there was a preemption clause in the current charter with the Arlemann steam packet company that meant that we couldn't actually purchase the vessel because they they they purchased it themselves the Arlemann steam packet company from the owners which was a private equity company in in America. Most recently in the past six weeks we've had a team of three people down in New Zealand looking at a ship and that ship is up for sale or it was up for sale. We spoke to Scottish Government about it Scottish Government backed us gave us a budget we bid for that vessel but unfortunately we were outbid by another ferry company so huge disappointment certainly for us as the asset owner a massive disappointment equally for for Circo that you know desperately wants a more capacity because they have some they have peaks and troughs is all of these services do but at the peaks at the moment there's just simply isn't enough capacity but we're continuing to look and you know ultimately what I would say is on both counts the Scottish Government when we said we found something including for the west coast with the Lockfresher they given us a budget and said look you know go and see if you can buy that vessel we were successful with the Utner we run successful with the arrow because of the preemption clause and unfortunately we got outbid by somebody with much deeper pockets than us in in relation to a vessel called the Straitsman which operates between the north island and south island of New Zealand. We have another one that we we are considering at the moment but it is absolutely our desire to make sure that there is enough capacity for sure and that equally goes for the west coast we are continually looking hundreds and hundreds of ships over a five-year period 650 in fact that we've looked at most of which are not suitable at all and we know that very early doors but you know we if we come across something that we consider is suitable we speak to the operator about it the operator comes with us so there was a master from from Serco went down to New Zealand with Jim Jim was down there as well um and before anybody says it it wasn't a holiday it was two days of traveling took 48 hours down there um and you know a national crisis with flooding in New Zealand to boot and come all the way back again so you're doing that sort of tripping under a week um so we are literally going to the other ends of the earth to try and resolve these issues okay thank you thanks uh now i made a mistake i should have brought the deputy convener in and i don't want to incur a broad so i'm going to bring her in now uh and then bring Monica in in a minute say Fiona so islandsers are telling us that they need reliability but obviously we're seeing more cancellations due to weather um i'd like to ask you what your actions you're taking to mitigate against changing weather we know stormier weather coming through climate change et cetera what you're doing to mitigate against weather patterns changes rising sea levels i should procure new vessels but also invest in harbour facilities okay so um Jim's obviously alluded to this and i'll just repeat what he said briefly and then Ramsey can get his third shot at answering a question so um from a ship perspective we are looking at the powering ships we're looking at the station holding of ships we're looking at it what sort of bow thruster capacity you need um all of that leads to more resilience effectively we are aware that the weather patterns are changing um not for the better i might hasten to add um and so we we are doing everything we can to future proof that so if you look at for instance some of the older vessels in the fleet the big ones they've maybe got a bow thruster capacity of 0.8 of a megawatt new ships have got two megawatts so you know that means that they will they will perform much better in in in difficult conditions when they're at sea um i'll hand over to Ramsey because he can talk to you certainly about the issues relating to to the ports and what we're doing about climate change and sea level rises okay thank you so i suppose there's two aspects to look at there is the immediate resilience and what we're doing to effectively assist the operators and then there is the more the longer term for the future planning so in terms of the immediate resilience we have across our network installed weather and tide monitoring and we are currently installing webcams and that is so the vessel skippers the masters can actually log on to our website and live see what the actual weather is doing they can physically see the port they can see the tide and not just rely on predicted tide tables that has actually been so successful that we as CML have been tasked with assisting the other ports around the west coast in also installing similar equipment to to help improve resilience especially with the worsening weather in terms of then new port design yes climate change global warming potential sea level rises that is part of our port design we use uk climate guidance and sepa guidance to look at the when we're doing the design our consultants what potential sea level rises could be as an example our we're at the design stage at guruch ferry terminal at the moment to redevelop the port and there is nearly 600 millimetres of sea level rise predicted in the worst case and so that is being included into our design so effectively we will raise the level of the the pier to to accommodate for that and as kevinas said we are trying to ensure that the ports are generally future proofed and that's not just for for weather and and such we're also trying to future proof the ports for vessels as well so we are having a look at whether we can deepen the ports length and the piers wide in the links bands so the ports are not a constraint going forward and just as a follow-up clearly this needs some you know greater strategic kind of analysis and you know at the end of the day the masters will decide you know if vessel sales are not but this is going to be the reality for the future do you think there needs to be more strategic thinking across all our ports bearing in mind you don't you know have them all of them as your assets we've got you know local councils have ports other there's other ownership and as a night you know we've got so much independence in our islands and our coastal communities that rising sea levels and worse weather is going to have a major impact do you think that that's something that the government should look more closely at is how we actually future proof that whole asset base and is there a danger that if sea mal just looks after its own asset base understandably we might not be as joined up as we might be for both procurement of vessels working off different different harbours i guess if you started with the absolute clean sheet in a greenfield you would have the ownership of all of them under one banner but that's just not the reality that we were at so you've heard from other councils i think scott read Murray Bay net out a student in one of the previous sessions and we're working very very closely with those ports port owners would we like to own more ports would it be better and easier for us when we're designing vessels and stuff yes it would be but as it stands there is different ownership different ownership models there is private ports there's trust ports there's obviously obviously council own ports there's even one owned by the canner who's owned by national trust for Scotland so and ourselves we got 26 of 53 so just under half but again we are in very regular contact with everybody over how those ports develop whether it's a trust port whether it's a council port so we're feeding into that and as Ramsey said we were asked and there was a commitment given by um Jenny Gilruth the minister in relation to rolling out the weather monitoring we already had it at a number of our ports and we're going to roll that out across all 53 ports there are some ports that are very very close to one another so Collin Tri from Llew Bullock is you know 800 meters might be might be good good for a bridge eventually um but um you know probably not at each of those because you know that's it's not cheap doing this stuff it's 25 30 000 pounds of ports so if the ports are very very close together we probably won't put one at either end but anything more than 10 50 minutes we will thank you thanks Fiona sorry Monica your questions now thank you I know i've been very quiet today waiting patiently um i wanted to pick up on where the deputy governor left i think really important pointing about future proofing ports and harbours and interesting that you said that um Seamall owns around half of the ports so we've got quite a mixed picture in terms of ownership um we've heard from CalMac um who suggested that greater standardisation of ports and harbours would be helpful so just wonder if that's a position that you agree with and what Seamall um is doing and can do to standardise vessels and harbour facilities um with the aim of increasing flexibility and resilience across the the network well we were 100 by into that obviously i mean standardisation of vessel standardisation of ports is it goes without saying and that's exactly what we're doing at the moment um i'm not quite sure why but historically um scotland seems to have you know built an individual ship for an individual island and reinvented the wheel every time we're not going down that road anymore we've said very clearly that from a standardisation point of view on the vessels um we've got four being built in turkey one could argue if the money was there that we could build another three or four of broadly the same design um and that is complete standardisation um as far as it can go um small vessel replacement programme those vessels will all be of a standard type i don't think you're to get confused with what the ship actually looks like standardisation is a whole raft of things it might be that a ship is slightly wider it might be slightly longer it's about what machinery it's got on it what what what navigation equipment it's got on it so um and it is exactly the same with the ports we we are on a journey if we look at the lights of brodick if we look at the lights of tarback harris buig which isn't ours that's owned by the highland council loch maddy all of those are being developed on the basis of a standard design um the only area where you can't really standardise them to be perfectly honest with you is a lot of the small vessels land on slipways and the bigger ones land on on links bands so we can't standardise that but if you look at the small vessels that land on slipways that is in in in progress in terms of standardisation equally on the big ships we're standardising that so we went 100 by into that okay i don't want to get too technical but you mentioned machinery and navigation um are these um matters where there can be maybe consensus or are there sort of different opinions or other sort of barriers around that i don't know if maybe ramsey can add to that but i'm interested to know if that's an area where there could be consensus uh yeah i mean in terms of i suppose machinery and equipment around the port network uh we are yeah have a relatively standard uh pieces of equipment at the moment we actually it's almost back to you earlier question about what are we doing beyond the reach of seamile we have either provided advice or actually project managed uh works for third party ports for either trust ports or at the moment for council ports and i think not trying to blow it on trumpet but we are seen as the the experts across the west coast ferries network on that and people do often turn to us and look at what seamile are doing and we we we provide advice to them thank you i just wanted to refer back to something that Morag said in opening remarks which seems like a long time ago now but you talked about the carbon footprint of ports and and your work around that so i'm just a bit interested to hear a bit more about some of the opportunities and challenges in that regard we've obviously had a little bit about some of the the mitigation work around weather and climate change but in terms of carbon footprint you talked about this natural journey you want to hear how that journey is going yeah so i'm sick and probably talk about some of the successes we've had in recent projects yeah so i'd certainly in terms of the kind of decarbonisation i suppose splitting it into buildings and then piers and landsides so on piers and landside front we are installing or have installed in several ports both our own and third parties shore power so as back to what jim and kevin have said earlier the the small vessel replacement programme and our existing hybrid ferries we have shore power where you basically plug the vessel in in charge overnight we currently have two facilities broadic and tarbet where you can plug in large vessels and for the four new vessels being built in turkey we are putting in more shore power there so whilst they won't charge batteries for propulsion they will basically cover the hotel load as it's called for overnight so you won't have generators running all the time we're also around the network replacing or are very nearly around our network finished replacing all our street lighting for instance to led lighting low emission we also have electric vehicle charging points around the network so we have eight and within our new port development we are going to be putting in more very quickly just on to our buildings so we last year undertook an energy efficiency review of all our operational buildings around 26 of our ports and there are both short and long term outcomes of that that a lot of the short term class them as easy wins we are already included into our plan preventative maintenance programme so we are putting in draft proofing we're putting in new insulation we are reviewing whether to change out the boilers to more energy efficient boilers we have in the past put in biomass boilers we have air source heating solar and we've even used a reed bed water wastewater treatment system so we are doing an awful lot for for decarbonisation and we will continue to do so i think that's me done can we just a question on the air source heating because i've been asking Scottish government questions recently on this because in terms of what we need to do domestically in Scotland we've got a long way to go i think there's only 21 000 homes that have air source heating you know we need government and other key stakeholders to lead by example and i think the Scottish government responded just this week or last week sorry to tell me they've only got one building with an air source heat pump i think you've adapted tarbert ferry terminal had did that go well any learnings from that that you can share with the rest of Scotland yes the the tarbert the works actually only finished in the the terminals only operational about a month ago okay so at the moment in terms of learnings from that in terms of installation all went very well i would say we haven't been running it long enough to to see we have though been using biomass boiler in Brodyx since 2018 so five years now and that is working working very well and the fuel type that is wood chips instead of pellets and that was done because there is actually a chip provider or supplier on the island it would have been rather so we say foolish to have done a pellet supply to have to then bring them across in the ferry it's slightly self-defeating so that does work very well okay thank you okay Liam i think you've got a following question yes thank you convener i just a follow-up question to something earlier Kevin Hobbs if i make i asked you about this contract for the ferries being built in Turkey and specifically you said that there was no stipulation in that contract for using Scottish or UK or EU supply chain where possible now i've seen such clauses in other sectors so just the thing i want to clarify is if such a clause had been desired in the contract to build ferries in Turkey who would have put that in the contract would that have been something within sea miles gift or would you have waited for an instruction from the Scottish Government to put that in as part of the contractual criteria it would have been in sea miles gift to do so sorry to interrupt but that doesn't mean that an awful lot of european suppliers are not supplying to the turkish shipyard because they are including Scottish suppliers so the way the contract runs is we have a very close working relationship with the shipyard the shipyard proposes what what equipment they're going to put on the ship and obviously one of the the key criteria is is it supportable and obviously that that then lends itself to quite a lot of input from european yards i don't with you on it i suppose it's quite sad now you know i've been involved in shipbuilding and the Clyde only working life whereby the number of suppliers is reducing and reducing and there's very very few actually one of the ones kevin mentions for the stabilizers is a scottish base but there's very very very few suppliers that can actually provide the shipyard that we deal with in Turkey we have such an open relationship with them you know if the suppliers are there in scotland they'll contact them and they'll ask them you know if they're there but they're few and far between now when we're looking at you know major suppliers of equipment which is just understand the situation is it would have been within it was for seamal to put that stipulation in the contract to say if it is possible to use scottish suppliers then that should be the preference it was for seamal to make that decision yeah thank you very much community i'm just looking around the other committee so i've got one for the question so if no other members have any question my question is based on the the evidence that you've given this morning kevin i'm actually enthusiastic about the amount of ferries that are up for design and delivery i'm less confident in the price which i think is a year old i think it may be significantly more but looking to the sustainable delivery of ferry services in scotland you have to look back to the history and the history says in the report that we didn't get the contract right so it says in the report the rec committee report action should uh when it's talking about new design future contracts achieve the most appropriate balance between cash flow risk and include more robust safeguards and it goes on to say things so based on that it would give me more confidence looking to the future if we could understand the tender process and i accept that you might not be able to give all this information today we'd be happy to receive it in writing a definition an explanation of the tender process how that went through and selected the yard a sign off of the design of of the ferries the overall cost that's a that's been agreed at the outset for each boat how the stage payments will be made how many there were and who will check them and when it comes to delivery on what dates delivery will be made and what penalties will be in place for failing to meet those delivery dates that seems to me the fundamental process or the most important process of of getting the future design sorry the future ferries to scotland on time as highlighted in the last report and if we're to have a sustainable ferry service we'll need to only confidence that that's being achieved i would you would be in a position to write to the committee to clarify those points in relation to these contracts anything for you Edward sorry anything for you well you'll say generous and i'll take that we're in the spirit i'm sure it was meant but but you know if we're looking forward we've got to make sure that we've got those right Fiona you want to come in and briefly then i'll conclude yes you'll know that we heard from norway and and exhibits from norways different to scotland obviously more coastal we've got the island's experience but i was very struck about their forward thinking approach clearly they're operating new technologies they're about to deploy hydrogen vessel and they've also got automatic berthing in different in different ports but i was also struck by their approach and it was quite an iterative procurement process close to market but also incentivising innovation now i understand seymill has gone in the past through i think challenging times and i appreciate that and so to then switch forward to that kind of different approach and culture requires resources support from government and probably long-term strategic thinking about how innovative we want our sector to be so what are your reflections of what it would take we can make recommendations in our report as to to the government as to the type of ferry scenario that we want it is about strategic thinking it's about the joined approach about roads leading use of roads to use of cars etc trying to reduce that rather than build vessels take more cars why are we thinking about end-to-end traffic etc so is there something about the Norwegian model that attracts you that you think that scotland could aspire to and what would it take for us to do so i don't think we're particularly far away from it to be honest with you i mean you've heard today what we're doing in terms of decarbonisation you've heard today that we're involved in quite a number of internationally recognised projects including one called high seas which you're aware of where we've got an improving principle for you know a hydrogen powered vessel so you know it's it's not that we are lagging behind and in actual fact if you look at sea miles history we we won awards for the first ever diesel electric hybrid in the world so and that was Jim's brainchild so you know it's it's not that we're it's not that we're lagging we we have a network of contacts within the ferry industry because of our experience that you know everybody is talking because everybody is you know responsible human beings wants decarbonisation to happen so this is this is this is a journey for sure we've told you already that there isn't all the answers out there but everybody is working collaboratively within the ferry industry and the shipping industry more globally you know to to achieve this 2050 goal or in in Scotland's case the 2030 target and the 2045 target so you know i don't think we need anything more what what has been missing very very clearly is the money to replace the ferries in the ports and and we it's it's no secret that from our perspective we have felt that there has been a lack of investment in the last 20 years since the turn of the century that has been addressed with the iip the 518 now the 695 we've told you what the overall budget used to be we're revisiting that at the moment because of the issues of inflation and you know we are not playing follow the leader we we are with the industry applying all of our joint and collaborative knowledge to to do the best we can you know in terms of climate change thank you come in here as well i think there's a wider discussion around research being done within scotish universities and i'll take off my seam all hat and put on my hat as deputy chair of court at harry at what university which has a big project in relation to hydrogen but i think research across the universities working in collaboration with industry is also something that we need to look very closely at i don't think any one person has the answer and i think more people that are looking at it the more chance we have of finding solutions thank you very much and thank you for coming this morning i think we would concur with you or i concur with you that i don't think islanders want gold taps in their terminal buildings they want reliable ferry service which is the point of of this inquiry so thank you very much for giving evidence to us this morning and i briefly suspend the meeting to allow a changeover of witnesses okay and welcome back everyone to this meeting today i'd like to welcome Jenny Gilruth the minister for transport uh thank you for joining us i'd also like to welcome Lawrence Kenny head of ferries policy transport scotland and chris wilcox head of ferries unit transport scotland before we begin minister i'd like to make a brief opening statement yes good morning convener and thank you for the opportunity to speak with committee members this morning i welcome the committee's inquiry very much and i thank you for the opportunity this morning to that end i spend a great deal of my time as transport minister engaging with our island communities and most recently i was in ila during recess speaking to local stakeholders there about project neptune i'm sure we'll hear more about that during the course of today's committee that consultation is well under way and is being led by angus cambal to my mind the committee's inquiry is extremely timely and i'm keen to hear from members today about their views on areas for improvement on how we deliver ferry services in scotland i would reflect there is already a substantial body of evidence which now exists in relation to this topic so we have of course the rec committee report from last session the audit scotland report from march of last year the pending public audit committee report and project neptune which i provided an update to parliament on back in september so i very much welcome the committee's inquiry but i also know that we need to ensure that these recommendations are implemented at pace and that we have concrete solutions for improvements which are backed of course by our island communities now the challenges that have been faced particularly in recent times in relation to the calmac fleet will be well known to committee members island communities deserve better than the service that they've been experiencing in recent times and i'm live to that i think it's worth reflecting as you heard in some evidence i think from seamal in the previous session that weather is impacting on sailings in a way that it has never done in previous years i just want to reflect that in january in febru of last year alone for example weather accounted for just over 92 of all cancellations or Covid-19 i should say and indeed last january in febru weather accounted for 10 rather of all cancellations so those impacts are one of the reasons i announce additional scottish government investment to give weather monitoring equipment to third party ports i think as you heard from seamal that should help to give more reliable forecasting and less disruption as a result i also announced last year that transport scotland is developing performance indicators that would be distinct from contractable targets to better reflect the real experience of passengers but convener none of that detracts from the fact that we need to bring about greater resilience in the calmac fleet that's exactly why in the last 12 months i have accelerated investment into the fleet i also want to put on record that in the last six months seamal have made offers to purchase two second hand major vessels the mv arrow and the mv straitsman which have unfortunately been unsuccessful so securing that additional second hand tonnage is difficult in a competitive market it remains challenging but commercial discussions remain on-going convener it's worth saying that by the end of this parliament in 2026 on top of the mv law freezer we expect to have delivered six new major vessels and expect the small vessel replacement programme to be well under way secondly as i mentioned community engagement on project Neptune is already underway being led by angus cambell and finally i was pleased to publish an advanced draft of our long term plan for vessels and ports at the end of last year as a first and a significant element of the islands connectivity plan i'd like to put on record my thanks to the committee for the significant effort that's been played in relation to engaging constructively with our island communities i think it's been really helpful to hear some of the feedback and i know that you've been to aran orcney in the outer hebrides islands that i have also visited in recent times clearly we now have to reform how ferry services are delivered in scotland but with that guiding principle that our island communities have to be part of what comes next i look forward to the committee's report and to responding to the outcomes in this inquiry and my officials and i will be happy now to take questions thank you very much minister and a quick question for you to start this off is that the last ferries plan is over 10 years old and it's taken 10 years to come up with a new plan um at which we haven't yet seen sight of are you happy that 10 years is the right period for the existence of a plan or should it have been reviewed earlier and what lessons should we take from that whole process minister so i may bring in officials on reviewing it earlier i think it's worth pointing out that the ferries plan which of course ran until this year has already delivered a number of improvements so we've got new routes running for example we've got the campbeltown in the new malley bluff boys deal route i think you heard that from mr hobs in the last session we've also had the rollout of ret across the network for passengers and cars on the chifst network i should say that saved passengers significant amounts of money bluntly 25 million pounds a year and we've also had big upgrades in relation to port infrastructure so broadic pier for example tarbet and wombs bay and i think in relation to island's connectivity plan in the timescales that was the timescale agreed previously with the ferries plan of course there's been learning taken from the ferries plan um and i would perhaps bring in officials in relation to a review point but my understanding is that was the agreed time um and i think it works well um i think we need to have that long term forecast for where we're going next i think actually the plan itself is in draft i think that's quite important so engaging with island communities on what happens next is absolutely key i don't want to do something to island communities that they are not content with but it's also really important i think to islander confidence that we mark out now a clear way forward and chris or laurance may want to say more in relation to the review period within the ferries plan of course which ran for the last decade just before you do chris perhaps you could reflect on the fact that when we heard in evidence last week from the norwegian representative that the ferry fleet that we have in scotland wouldn't be in a position to tender for jobs in in norway so perhaps you just reflect on that and maybe include that in your answers so i mean first of all as i think you've heard in the previous session and hopefully committee will have seen from the draft plan their ambition is that the fleet is at a much reduced age to to there is that at the moment with the target age being being a 15 year piece going forward and that's certainly very much where our focus lies in that and the age of the fleet and the challenges you have around it are well known and something certainly in my tenure in the role we've been working towards as i have colleagues and my predecessor but some real momentum behind that in terms of the investment that's going in there now with regard to the plan i my understanding as there was a suggestion there might have been a five year review of the ferries plan which didn't take place in that kind of formal setting i would say though it's not it wasn't an entirely static document we didn't just have that as the blueprint we were working to there was the vessel replacement and deployment plan which was reasonably regularly updated as part of that process that has now morphed into the version that you see in front of you in terms of that pre-consultation draft going forward we've taken a deliberate decision not to have a kind of solid single plan and to have a kind of ring binder type approach to to the next plan on connectivity plan that will lend itself to more regular review to the individual components as we go along i think the key parts of that are clearly the vessel investment piece but also there are ongoing issues around fares and other things that we would probably review in our more regular basis as part of this plan whether that be on a kind of five-year basis or a more regular basis for some parts than others but certainly our reflection would be a more regular review of that as something we would have in the next plan thank you minister do you want to add anything to that or are you suggested Lawrence might come in i mean it's up to you sorry minister who you'd like to bring in well if Lawrence would like to yes happy to update on that that convener yeah that the long-term plan that way we published as the early draft just before before new year that identifies at a three-year kind of review period to ensure that's kept up to date going going forward and just to echo us as Chris has been saying that the approach we're taking now with the different elements of the island's connectivity plan overall allows us to to update things on a more more regular basis thank you okay we'll come to the next lot of questions which i think are from mark mark rascal i mean it just follows on from that point actually convener so i think you were talking there as to woke up just about the ring binder approach to the island's connectivity plan i'm just wondering if we could get a sense of where where those other parts of the plan will will slot in and the formal timetable for its adoption and then i think coming out of that that's just another question here around why the long-term plan for vessels and ports has been published ahead of community needs assessment okay so if you can just give a little bit more detail as to what is coming when it's coming and why there was a decision made to particularly publish that piece of work on vessels and ports ahead of the one on community needs but so um to answer mr rascal's question if i may and then i might bring in officials in relation to the icp itself there are a number of elements to that of course the long-term plan for vessels and ports which was published at the end of last year there will also be elements on the community needs assessment on fares policy on connecting and on work travel and on the low carbon plans those are the sections of the icp itself i expect to receive advice from transport scotland in the coming weeks in relation to the deadline and the timescales to which we are working and i'm happy to share updates on that with the committee but the final icp itself will be a relatively short document as an introductory document to those that kind of ring binder approach which is the approach that i've agreed with transport scotland which i think gives a more iterative process and allows actually us to be a bit more reflective as an organisation to change when we need to change things and maybe in the past we've not been as reflective and as constructive in that respect because we've been quite static in our approach to policy development and how that's implemented on the ground. Now in relation to the long-term plan itself your second question we did prioritise the publication of that document and as i mentioned an advance copy of that draft was published i think on the 30th of december i recall reading it in between christmas and new year so yes it was the 30th of december and that is a working draft and it's really important i think in relation to that draft that we now get stakeholder feedback on it. Again i think i'll go back to the point i made to the convener at the start of the session i don't want to voice something against island communities that they don't want to see and a further version of the draft is now being prepared in light of some of the feedback we've already have but this will be issued i think the plan is to commence in april for public consultation officials will correct me if i'm wrong and the icp and its associated delivery parts i around at the start of my answer will be supported of course by impact assessments too and the majority of their work in relation to the icp and these kind of chapters i suppose within it will be completed during 2023 but as i say i wait further advice from transport scotland on the full timetable for the sections that i've updated mr ruskellis. Okay thanks i mean i think that describes a kind of iterative process and conversation with communities about their needs and the vessels and ports that are required to meet those needs i think that's me just now convener. Okay perfect we will we will definitely come back to you Liam. Yes thank you convener good morning minister. Following on from that question for mark ruskell actually the current chiffs contract ends in october 2024 where are we at in terms of future planning for the service delivery and the process of tendering and will it be a problem or is there a concern that the contract will presumably be in the planning now before the island's connectivity plan or the long-term plan are finalised or even since they're at the stage of a working draft? So i understand the kind of concern i suppose that mr carers outlined i actually think it's not unhelpful that they're almost simultaneously sitting alongside because we're going out to consult at the moment as i mentioned i think my opening statement on project Neptune and part of that actually is angus cambal who's leading on this work asking communities as well about chistory and what they want to see as part of chistory how we can change for example the contract in future to look at delivering a service which actually works better for island communities because we know and the committee will know because you've been out and you've spoken to island communities about where the real challenges are i think irrespective of the model that we use in future i just like to give a reassurance that service delivery is going to continue now transport scotland are looking at the moment at the most appropriate way in which we can continue the services we will engage with key stakeholders on that i am and you know i hope to be able to update the committee in the coming weeks on more fully i suppose on the relations on the arrangements and what that will look like but i think it's really important that whatever we do next in relation to the next chist contract is something that island communities want and i'm very aware that there are parts of the current contract that don't work for island communities so we don't want to replicate that in relation to what comes next it's important that we hear from them in that respect and officials may want to say more on how that approach has been developed within transport scotland because i obviously that the work is on going at the current time yeah i mean just on your specific point there i can reflect on even on chiffs to the current contract there were a number of changes made following the introduction of that contract as you know we can have take a snapshot of what the services are like tender on that basis so we have something to tender on but obviously over that tendering period things change most significant one being some of the introduction of the new routes for instance 2015 and indeed RAT across the network so any contract that we have and any process around it has to be flexible enough to accommodate that change in policy particularly if you know depending on the length of the contract it may actually exceed the length of some of these plans or the review periods within them as a minister says the work is on going around the shape of chiffs 3 and how we best align these two pieces of work together and make sure that as that team starts that procurement and Lawrence on the team take forward that detailed work we can make sure there are synergies and we can align once contracts in place understand minister only you talked about the consultation on project net tune now one of the wise recommendations was that the key commercial principles and long-term strategic objectives would be agreed and they recommended by summer 2022 have those been agreed I will bring in a fish on that not to my knowledge at the current time because of course work is on going in relation to chiffs 3 but happy for transport Scotland to correct me if I'm wrong that's correct then I said the part of that work thank you final question for me at this stage you mentioned minister in your opening the long-term plan for vessels and ports you might have seen in the earlier session I was interested in the part of that that states we will reduce the average age of the fleet to around 15 years old by the end of the decade now you will have seen from the earlier session we heard Seymal talk about their plans to do that and it sounded reasonably confident that they'd be able to achieve that but they also talked about the cost of that and just right at the end you might have heard the chief exec say we need the money to replace the ferries now a cost I think I heard them put on that was 1.4 billion before the current inflationary situation do you have an idea of what the cost will be to achieve a fleet that is around 15 years old by the end of the decade now adjusted for inflation and we'll Seymal have enough money to do it well the straight answer to Mr Kerr's question is not now in relation to the inflationary impacts I think we heard from Mr Hobbes that he wasn't sure in relation to where the inflationary impacts would sit and what that would look at in relation to the costs agreed so that's something we will need to consider because irrespective of portfolio in Scottish government right now the inflationary impacts of what we're able to do is a government are really quite dramatic and it has limited our potential I think to create investment in lots of different parts of the transport network I would though like to touch on a point I think that Mr Hobbes made in relation to accelerating investment to my mind that's how we bring the average age of the fleet down so since May 2021 we've brought in the envy lock frisia and the open to create new route we've managed to tartar the envy arrow we've made significant progress on 801 and 802 we have announced earlier last year the procurement of two new isle vessels and then at the end of last year an additional two new vessels so that's four in total bringing a level of standardisation which I think is really important across the fleet so we have in the last financial year been able to leverage additional investment which I think is crucial to getting us to that reduction of the average age of the fleet but I make no bones about it in relation to Mr Kerr's overall question this will be financially challenging for the government and of course the government has responded and will respond in due course to where we're able to prioritise those investments to meet the requirements that the plan sets out I understand the answer can I just press you on that minister because so I've asked you what is the new inflationary cost of the plans of on the long-term plan that is still at a working draft and it seems to me that it ought to be or ought it not to be for the government to be very quickly assessing okay seamal think that there's a £1.4 billion cost we are in inflationary times shouldn't or when will you be able to revert to seamal and say okay here are here's what's happening with inflation here is the real cost if we are to achieve what you've set out in the long-term plan well have to do that obviously as a matter of urgency I would just reflect to committee members that's the first time that I've heard I think that statistic I don't know if officials have heard that previously in relation to inflationary impacts and it's also important to reflect that we have already leveraged £580 million into ports and vessels so the additionality that's been brought in the last financial year joins that contribution but you know to mr Kerr's wider point in relation to inflation of course we will need to work with seamal on mapping out what those inflationary impacts actually mean for the current fleet and the deliverables which are absolutely key but I think today was the first time I'd heard that statistic in particular in relation to the inflationary impacts on the fleet so happy to hear officials views on that but I think we will need to look at the point that mr Kerr has raised. I would give assurance that my team are regularly engaged and it is working in that collaborative way with seamal building on their advice around what those projects are looking like my team looking at where some of those pressures might be and how we can accommodate that within expected budgets I think it's also not as straightforward as just applying a simple 10 percent inflationary inflationary uplift we have seen projects just given market weather market conditions and other cost of materials going considerably above that 10 percent in some cases from early estimates seeing 40 50 60 percent uplifts in some of those costs in terms of port infrastructure projects in particular so those are those are challenging times for us even within the 580 and indeed the additional monies that have been that have been secured so we are absolutely mapping that out I get a kind of go back to Lawrence's point of why that plan will have to be reviewed on a rolling three-year basis to feed into that hopefully longer term budgeting process that we've benefited off with the IIP monies. Very grateful, convener. Thank you very much Liam. The next question has come from Monica. Thank you, convener and good morning.  Do you support calls for island residents to sit on the board of CalMacferries and Seamall? Yes, I do. I think we need more islander representation on these boards although I suppose I would reflect that boards are not the only way in which I would expect Seamall and CalMac to listen to island communities there are one way in which they can do that. I think that you heard from Morag McNeill who I would just put on record is the first woman to hold the role of chair at Seamall that we were able to appoint or I was able to appoint Murdo McClennan at the end of last year as a non-exec to the Seamall board. He's already making a big impact on that board in relation to the work that he's undertaking with island communities but yes I think it's really important we have islanders on these boards so that they can help to reflect the lived experience of people who live on our islands and depend on those lifeline services. Now there's a challenge there to follow up the question and I suppose if Transport Scotland had a pushback to me it would be well we need to ensure that there's a necessary skills and experience and I think the point is we need to as an organisation in Scottish Government Transport Scotland working with Seamall and CalMac ensure there are opportunities for people to get that extra skills and experience if they need it. I think we really need to focus on upskilling people if there's a need for that but also recognising that islanders will bring strength to these boards in relation to the delivery of services in island communities. Is there a pushback from Transport Scotland? I'll let Transport Scotland answer. I certainly wouldn't characterise any pushback, not to contradict the minister there. No, I think it's important we have the right mix of skills and expertise on the board. I think certainly in the most recent rounds we have cast the net as pretty widely, we've focused on where can we advertise better to attract people with those skills within that island connection or location. Is there something else we can be doing? I think as the minister said to support people who otherwise and I think that this is not just in these boards but more generally to people who wouldn't normally apply to these boards to come forward at different ages and different characteristics than we sometimes see so absolutely feeding into all of that across the piece. I think more specifically in relation to those particular board positions, there was a requirement for people to come forward with to be able to demonstrate that they fully understood and could understand the experience and familiarisation with the issues and very pleased to see Seymur Doe and the Seymal space and engaging on that basis. Just to build on Chris's point, I've alluded to Project Neptune and a couple of responses already, so Angus Campbell, who's leading on the work, is hugely important in that respect, although a former islander has a house on the storeway. Angus Campbell is leading on that work and as an islander, the information that he is able to glean and get from some of the consultation events is different than that of mainlanders, if that makes sense, because he has a relationship with island communities. He is able to garner much better information, much more qualitative feedback to help inform and improvement to the service, so I think that that's really important. It's not just about islanders and boards, although I think that that's important and I agree with Miss Lennon's point absolutely, but it's also about ensuring that we build on islander representation throughout the process, whether that's CHIFS, Project Neptune and ICP. Excellent. I think that we would all agree with what we've heard. Building on that then, thinking about trade union representation, minister, you work closely with Scottish real holdings, and it's very positive that the trade unions have representation, and at the moment that's through Rose Foyer, general secretary of the STUC. Would you support similar arrangements for relevant trade unions to sit on the board of CalMac, Ferries and Seamall? Yes, absolutely. I would. Again, Transport Scotland would welcome that too. Oh, they'd have to because I'm the minister. Just checking, just checking. No, I think that it's important that we have trade union representation. Having Rose on the SRT board brings us strength to our relationship with trade unions, but also to the delivery of the service model. Yes, absolutely. I think that it's a model that we should look to roll out in relation to more of our public bodies, having that direct engagement and representation is really important. So, it's clearly an aspiration of the minister. What works under way to make that happen? Well, obviously, we have this. I'm just very conscious at the moment that, I think, as I alluded to in my opening statement, we've got a lot of evidence just now that exists in relation to the problems of where we need to go next in relation to the delivery of ferry services in Scotland. What I need to do now is move us forward on project net change specifically, but I think your point about trade unions is a good one, so we'll take that away, certainly as an action point from today's meeting. I'll speak to CalMac and see Mal as well about what we might be able to do in that space. Thank you. I'll just remind members of my register of interests as a trade union member and a member of the RMT parliamentary group here in Parliament. What scope is there for greater devolution of management within CalMac ferries to bring decision making powers closer to those directly responsible for service delivery, so thinking beyond just board places? I think that there should be a lot of scope for greater devolution of management because, in my experience as minister, island communities often feel as though CalMac is a bit top heavy, and I think that it would be really important if, in the future delivery model, we look to have a more people-focused organisation that is on the ground in our island communities. Certainly, if you go out—and I know that the committee has been out and about—and if you speak to folk who live in our island communities, they will tell you some of the best people who work in the organisation or the people who work in the ports or in the ticket offices or who help them on the boats. There are some fantastic people in those organisations, and I'm obviously talking at the moment about CalMac, but I should say in Circle North Link. There should be opportunities, Ms Lennon is right, in relation to the sentiment of our question for devolution of management, or a more front-faced organisation. One of the things that I've done as minister in the past year and a bit is to convene regular resilience calls. I think that that's really important as minister, that I hear regularly and routinely from island communities when there are periods of sustained disruption, but it's not just me that comes to those meetings. It's CalMac, CMAL, it's Transport Scotland. I think that there is something about organisations facing up to when there are challenges, and of course I do that as minister too, and the community seeing it, understanding that and actually being reassured is often my experience when there are challenges on the network. People that I speak to on those resilience calls at island communities are reassured when they know that there is a plan. What doesn't provide them with reassurance is the uncertainty that outages cause. To go back to the overall arching question that Ms Lennon asks around that devolution of management, we need to think about how we can get more of CalMac's management team maybe into our communities, but we need the organisation to think about the strengths that it has already within it. The people who work in the ticket offices, the people on the front line, they are fantastic advocates and ambassadors really for the organisation, so it's not just all about the managers. On our visits to island communities, we've also had some feedback about Transport Scotland, so you'll not be surprised to have some questions around that. Minister, are you confident that Transport Scotland's ferry officials have sufficient training and experience in maritime matters to effectively specify and manage ferry service contracts of significant scale? Yes, I am. Transport Scotland is made up of civil servants who are generic civil servants, so they work in lots of different government departments. I have to say that I've got two very experienced officials with me today. I'm not just saying that because they're with me, so I don't have a concern about the experience within Transport Scotland. What I would say is that capacity within Transport Scotland at the current time is quite challenging in relation to ferries, and that's because my officials spend a lot of their time responding to parliamentary inquiries, responding to reports, responding to the copious mix correspondence that we receive, and that's fine, but that takes time. Sometimes, I think that that is a pressure that needs to be addressed. I've raised that with the permanent secretary in relation to providing greater capacity within the ferries team in particular to ensure that we have the staff on board to deliver the changes and the improvements that passengers expect us to. In your assessment, there's a need for greater capacity. Is that just in terms of answering questions and dealing with normal parliamentary scrutiny? I guess media scrutiny, or is it more than that? It's not just that. I'll allow Transport Scotland to answer for themselves, but I think it's fair to say that in recent times—I'll be careful how I say this, convener—in recent times, because the topic of ferries has become a top coin in the chamber and in parliamentary committees, as is quite right, and as in Parliament's gift, the workload pressures on Transport Scotland have been greater than they have been probably any other time than before. That has an impact on the progress that we've been able to make in a number of different areas. I will allow Transport Scotland to speak for themselves. Just before you do so, I want to be clear for everyone listening. You welcome that scrutiny and the opportunity for any lessons to be learned. Absolutely. I think that the committee's inquiry is really important, and I'm keen that we use the committee's inquiry and the recommendations that you will provide us with to help inform the draft ICP, GIFS3 and where we get to on Project Neptune. I'm very much welcome it. I would absolutely echo those points as well as responding quite rightly to the scrutiny that's involved. What can we take from the evidence that we've seen from the people that you've had in front of you already, from the reports of the committee itself, from the direct engagement that we're having here today? I think that, as the minister has said, there are pressures within the team around responding to a number of things, but we have benefited from some additional resources in recent times and have pivoted from the organisation to support that, which has allowed us to really get into that forward-looking space, which I think is where the committee is, and actually the work that we've been able to put people into to drive forward the ICP work, which is really what we and communities are really keen to press on with to start to get some of that certainty. That engagement on the reshaping of our draft into something that we've had a chance to properly engage with, so we're really looking forward to getting out there to do that and indeed continue to engage with what we already have with communities and stakeholders across the piece. I'm sure that you'll be reassured that the minister has confidence in Transport Scotland and everyone in your team, but I'm sure that you will recognise that the public perception can be different, and we've heard some challenging conversations when we've been doing our inquiry visits, so going back to the original question, which was about the sufficiency of training and skills and expertise in managing contracts and projects of significant scale, what do you think needs to happen to improve that confidence, that public confidence in Transport Scotland? I've certainly heard some of those reflections in your earlier sessions. I'm not sure that those are entirely universal, and the senators don't reflect their experience when we have those data engagements. As the minister said, we are generalist civil servants, we set policy, we don't dictate it, we work with communities, stakeholders and other parties on that. However, we rely very much on the expertise that we have within the other parts of the tripartite, and we always say tripartite, but there's also a circle in the north link in the mix there too, and also people like the Ferris Community Board and other people that we engage with across the piece. We don't purport to be the overall experts with all of the answers. Our role is very much to support ministers in that engagement, where around specifications of contracts and other elements, as with other large government contracts, we will also rely on advice of industry experts and consultants, as people would expect us to do as part of that. I think that just to follow up on Chris's point in relation to consultation, it's obviously not just for Transport Scotland to go out and consult with island communities. I would expect, and they do routinely, CalMac and CML to go out and consult with island communities. I think that there's a role for all organisations within the tripartite in relation to building on that consultation, as I think you heard in the previous evidence session from Mr Hobbes. I suppose that something that came up certainly in our visits looking at deputy convener here, but the sort of phrase consultation fatigue came up a lot and it's not a lack of visits from committees, MSPs, ministers. You know, we've heard and again we're speaking to as many people as possible, so we're not treating as islanders, as homogenous groups here, but consultation fatigue and people having to say the same things over and over again. Do you recognise that minister coming fresh to the portfolio? Yes, I do. One of the things that I actually picked up with Transport Scotland a few months ago now was, I think, in relation to Mr Kerr's question about how you choreographed, so CHIFS3, Project Neptune and the ICP. My concerns minister was we can't go out and consult on three different things. I mean, I don't think that that's wise. So what we're trying to do is learn lessons from Project Neptune and gather some information through Angus's work, Angus Campbell I should say, in that regard, which I think is hugely important. But yes, I do recognise what Ms Lennon has said in relation to consultation fatigue. Consultation fatigue in my view happens when people don't see things changing, they get fed up. So the next important step is actually showing people what change will look like in the future and following that up. So that's why Angus's work, which we'll conclude at the end of next month, is vitally important in relation to setting out the next steps, where the community wants us to go and ensuring that that's absolutely where we get to so we can avoid the issues that Ms Lennon has outlined. I'm mindful of time. So I've just one tiny question, convener. The Scottish Government's ferry expert group was disbanded, I believe. I'm just wondering what sources is Transport Scotland drawing on for expertise in ferry services? Transport Scotland will consult and engage with a range of different experts and officials may want to say more on that. The ferry expert group, as far as I understand, disbanded before I was transport minister, although I have met with a number of the individuals who used to sit on the ferry expert group. I know a little of the history about it, so what I understand and officials can correct me if I'm wrong is that the group had evolved into something that perhaps was not the original aim. Officials will know a bit more about the history in that regard. However, I think that Ms Lennon's overall question is important because, although Sangas Campbell can provide me with the community's views, I also need a view from experts in relation to what we're developing and delivering in Scotland, so I have asked Transport Scotland for advice on how we will pull together a round table of experts at international level. Of course, Project Neptune looked at lots of different countries' delivery models because I think that that's hugely important that we don't lose out on that expertise. I think that I heard the last evidence session at the tail end, where I met Neil talking about the importance of academic expertise. I think that that's hugely important. I know that Seamall used that academic expertise in their work, so we need to cast the net wide. I'm sure that Transport Scotland, in fact, I know that Transport Scotland engages with experts on a regular basis. That was just one way in which it was done historically. I don't think that it means that it isn't an on-going process. Just briefly, do Lawrence or Chris want to add to that in terms of the ferry expert group? You pushed the envelope, as far as your questioning is allowed, to allow other committee members in. So I think that, as a minister in the interests of brevity, as a minister, I get articulate that I think that there was a general acceptance that that group had not really fulfilled the function that it originally envisaged doing. As a minister, it outlines as well as the expertise within the operators and, indeed, within Seamall that we already draw on. We were part of the project-nection engagement with a number of international operators and, indeed, our Government counterparts, which was quite an interesting experience. There's definitely something for us to build on as part of that, and that's something that we need to take away, as well as the recommendation that the minister made to us, too. I look forward to what comes next after project-nection. Clearly, there are operations of ferries, there's procurement and asset ownership, and there's also a variety of different strategic thinking, and that could lie at any point in any arrangement, and there's different options on the table. I'd like to particularly ask about Transport Scotland. Minister, how do you know that Transport Scotland is doing their job? Well, as the former cabinet secretary will know, I have confidence in my officials that they are doing their job. Of course, project-nection was carried out by Ernst and Young. They were appointed consultants who carried out that investigation last year, and I published that in September of last year and presented it to Parliament. Overall, in relation to the role that Transport Scotland fulfil, it's a hugely important one, but I have confidence that they are fulfilling their role if that's the deputy convener's question. I'm just asking whether the minister might be open to a different arrangement, potentially where some of the strategic thinking might lie within Government, particularly where a lot of the thinking has to be about wider connectivity, about net zero wider issues, and that some of the strategic work that Transport Scotland does could well lie in the type of functions that overlap with some of the functions that SEMAL currently has. However, in order to have that governance and accountability, would she be open to thinking about different ways that are potentially informed by what the committee may recommend? Yes, absolutely. I'm not going to disband Transport Scotland at this parliamentary committee this morning, convener, but I think that it's important to get into some of the detail of Mrs Lop's question that we recognise some of the challenges within the tripartite, and I'm sure that committee members will have read Project Neptune. The tripartite structure at the current time comes with a number of different challenges. Actually, there's a line in the report that talks about the role of ministers and that that being actually quite detached sometimes often is the case from the tripartite itself. So that's problematic because it's me in the chamber answering parliamentary questions, it's me in front of the committee, and yet ministers can feel very detached from that process, and I think that that's a problem. So I suppose to Mrs Lop's point there around about could some of these responsibilities be transferred within Scottish Government? Yes, they could. Could that strengthen the relationship between Transport Scotland and Scottish ministers? Yes, I would agree. Ultimately, of course, Project Neptune, the community consultation