The next item of business is a statement by Nicola Sturgeon on a Covid-19 update. The First Minister will take questions at the end of her statement and so there should be no interventions or interruptions and I call on Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I will give an update today on the latest Covid situation. As part of that, I will recap on decisions made at the end of last week in relation to international travel. I'll also announce some additional support to help businesses improve the ventilation of their premises. I'll give an update on the introduction of the Covid certification scheme following a discussion at Cabinet this morning. First, I'll cover today's statistics. 2,370 positive cases were reported yesterday, 10.6 per cent of the tests carried out. 1,027 people are currently in hospital with Covid for more than yesterday and 73 people are receiving intensive care, which is three fewer than yesterday. Sadly, a further 16 deaths have been reported over the past 24 hours and that takes the total number of deaths registered under the daily definition to 8,551. The number of deaths reported in recent days is a reminder of the grief the virus continues to cause families across the country and I send again my condolences to everyone who has lost a loved one. On a more positive note, the vaccination programme continues to make very good progress over the weekend. The milestone of 8 million vaccinations in Scotland was reached. As of this morning, 4,185,574 people have received a first dose and 3,832,498 have now had both doses. In total, 84 per cent of the over-16 population is now fully vaccinated with two doses. That includes 96 per cent of the over-40s, 75 per cent of 30 to 39-year-olds and 63 per cent of 18 to 29-year-olds. In addition, 71 per cent of 16 and 17-year-olds have had a first dose. Of course, it is important to remember that at this stage only a single dose is recommended for this age group. Those are exceptionally high uptake rates, but, as we go into winter, we are obviously keen to push them even higher and I will return to that point later. However, we are also now implementing the next stages of the programme. Vaccinations for 12 to 15-year-olds started last week at drop-in clinics. Appointment letters are being sent out from this week to everyone in that age group who has not already been vaccinated. I would again take this opportunity to encourage all 12 to 15-year-olds and, indeed, their parents and carers to read the online information about vaccination so that informed decisions can be taken. Of course, if there are questions or concerns, please do raise those with vaccinators when attending appointments. The programme of booster vaccinations is also under way now in line with JCVI advice. Care home residents started getting booster jags last week. From this week, those over 70 years of age and those on the highest risk list will start to get booster jags too. People in those groups will be notified of appointments by GPs or by letter. People on the highest risk list who are immunosuppressed or immunocompromised are being invited separately for a third dose. The figures reported over the past week show that, although Covid cases remain at a high level, they are continuing to fall. To put current case numbers into context, in the five weeks between 2 August and 6 September, the increase in average daily cases was more than fivefold, from an average of 1,115 new cases a day to 6,438. Since then, average daily cases have halved to 3,119 new cases a day on average. The numbers now are also below the previous peak of early July. Indeed, in the last week alone, there has been a fall of almost one-fifth. The steepest falls of more than a quarter have been in the 15 to 19 and the 20 to 24 age groups. However, it is important to note that there have been significant declines across all age groups. What is obviously extremely positive is that this overall reduction in cases has happened without the need to reintroduce any lockdown restrictions, which of course all of us wear and are very keen to avoid. We consider that the fall in cases is being driven by a number of factors. A key one is likely to be the increasing level of immunity, which is now relatively high in Scotland. That comes mainly from vaccination, although also to some extent from infection with the virus and indeed in some cases from both. I will return to my earlier point about the need to drive the already high vaccine uptake rates even higher. The current downward trajectory of cases underlines again the vital importance of getting vaccinated if you are eligible. That includes taking up the opportunity of a booster jag when it is offered. Getting vaccinated undoubtedly remains the single most important thing that any of us can do to help to keep cases under control. However, other factors are also likely to have contributed to the fall in cases. Those include obviously the performance and the hard work of those in test and protect, and all of the considerable efforts made by individuals, businesses and other organisations to step up compliance with the basic mitigation measures that remain in place. I am very grateful to everyone who has taken extra care in recent weeks in an attempt to halt and then reverse the spike in cases. That includes students and staff at our colleges and universities. This time last year, we were experiencing a rapid increase in cases, albeit from a much lower base level than is currently the case. Back then, that was, at least in part, down to the start of the new university term. However, so far this year, although it is still early in the new term, there has not been an increase in cases coinciding with the return of universities. Indeed, at this stage it could tentatively be argued that the reverse is true. As I said earlier, cases in the 15 to 24-year-old age groups, which, of course, includes many students, have actually been falling. That, of course, will be in part due to the impact of vaccination. However, I also know how much effort has gone into making student campuses and accommodation as safe as possible, and I am deeply grateful for all of those efforts. Cabinet Secretaries will continue to engage with different sectors in the weeks ahead to ensure that we are working together to support strong compliance with key mitigations such as face coverings, hand hygiene, good ventilation and, where possible, continued home working. The clear evidence of recent weeks suggests that those collective efforts are making a significant difference. If we stick with it, I am hopeful that we will keep a downward pressure on cases as we head into the winter period. I cannot stress enough how vital that is. It is extremely positive that case numbers have fallen significantly, but they remain more than two and a half times higher than they were in early August. As we move further into autumn and winter and people meet indoors for longer periods of time, there remains a risk that cases could rise again. Of course, hospital admissions and occupancy are already at high levels. That said, in the past week, we have also seen a slight but welcome reduction in the number of patients with Covid in hospital from 1,107 to 1,027. That is in line with our expectations. We know that the number of people in hospital usually starts to fall about two weeks after the number of new cases begins to fall. With cases having fallen further, we would hope and expect that the direct Covid pressure on the NHS will ease somewhat, although we expect the service to remain under significant pressure for some time to come. We also hope that the number of people dying from Covid will start to reduce as well. Again, some context is necessary. Although the slight slowdown in hospital admissions is very welcome, the number of patients in hospital today with Covid in 1,027 is still three times higher than it was in late August. Similarly, while there has been a gradual decline in the number of patients with Covid requiring intensive care, ICU occupancy is still far higher now than it was in late August. It is worth highlighting that the hospital figures that we report daily represent the total number of people who have first tested positive for Covid while in hospital or in the 14 days prior to their admission. Those figures have always included people who, though they have Covid, have actually been admitted to hospital for other reasons. However, I can advise Parliament that Public Health Scotland will tomorrow publish a more detailed analysis that will seek to quantify those admitted to hospital not just with Covid but because of Covid, and I am sure that that will be of interest to many. What any analysis makes clear is that the number of people in hospital, either with or because of Covid, is still too high, and that is putting immense pressure on the NHS. NHS staff are currently trying to care for hundreds of Covid admissions every week, while also dealing with the backlog built up during the pandemic and preparing for winter. That is exhausting and stressful for them, and I know that we are all deeply grateful to each and every one of them. It is therefore important to emphasise again that, by all of us, behaving in ways that can get and keep Covid cases under control, we are not simply protecting ourselves and those around us. We are also helping those who work so hard in our NHS and protecting their capacity to provide care and treatment to everyone who needs it. There are three further issues that I want to give an update on today. First, we confirmed last Friday changes to the rules on international travel. From 4 October, the blanket requirement for pre-departure tests for people travelling into Scotland will be removed. People who have been fully vaccinated or who are under age 18 will no longer need to provide a pre-departure test result if they are coming from countries not on the red list. We also hope to align our policy on post-arrival testing with that of England, although details of this UK-wide are still being finalised. As I indicated last week, we are making those changes to the travel testing rules with some reluctance. We do have a concern that the removal of testing requirements could hamper efforts to detect new variants. However, we have also considered, as I said last week, the practical consequences of not having a UK-wide-aligned position. In particular, we have to be realistic about the fact that people living here in Scotland could decide to return here via airports based in England if different rules are in place for Scottish airports. The result of that would be disadvantaged to our aviation and travel sector, but without any significant public health advantage. We must be pragmatic. However, we will not be complacent. I can confirm that we are working with Public Health Scotland to develop additional surveillance safeguards to help to guard against the risk of new variants. We will set out further details in due course, but I can confirm now that those arrangements will not incur costs for travellers. The second point that I want to give an update on is ventilation. It is now clear and accepted that good ventilation is an important mitigation against the risk of Covid transmission. Last month, we established an expert group to make recommendations on improving ventilation. I am very grateful to the group, chaired by Professor Tim Sharp from the University of Strathclyde, for all the work that it has done so far. In response to the group's initial recommendations, I can confirm today that we will allocate up to £25 million of funding to help small and medium-sized enterprises to improve ventilation. This support, which will include grants, will help those businesses to make necessary adjustments to their premises, including, for example, the installation of carbon dioxide monitors or alterations to windows and vents. The fund, which we expect to start making payments in November, will initially target higher-risk sectors, where people spend significant amounts of time in close proximity to each other, such as hospitality and leisure. We will set out more details of the eligibility criteria and the application process over the next few weeks. However, I hope that the funding package will help many small and medium-sized businesses to make indoor settings safer, especially through the winter months. The final issue that I want to give an update on is the Covid certification scheme. Last week, we set out further details of how the scheme will operate. I can confirm that we will be publishing further detailed guidance for businesses later today, which will demonstrate the proportionate common-sense approach that we are asking businesses to take. I would encourage businesses to familiarise themselves with the guidance, which will assist them in making the necessary preparations for the scheme coming into force. I can also confirm that the introduction of certification means that we are able to remove the capacity limits and the associated exemption process, which have been in place for stadia and live events. I know that that will be welcomed by event planners and local authorities. The certification scheme will apply, as previously indicated, to late-night venues open after midnight with alcohol, music and dancing, to live indoor unseated events of more than 500 people, to live outdoor unseated events of more than 4,000 people and to any event of more than 10,000 people. That means that once the scheme starts, anyone over the age of 18 who wants to go to a large event or to a late-night venue will be required to provide evidence that they are fully vaccinated or evidence that they are exempt. To facilitate that, the NHS Covid status app will go live on Thursday. It will provide a digital record of a user's vaccination status, including a QR code for each vaccination that a person has received. It is already possible for any of us, of course, to request a paper copy of our vaccination record or to download a pdf from the NHS Inform website. We have continued to engage with businesses as we have developed the detail of the certification scheme. I understand that many businesses have concerns about certification, but I am grateful to all those that have nevertheless engaged in those discussions so constructively. The Government remains of the view that a targeted certification scheme does have a part to play in driving vaccination rates up as high as possible and providing an additional layer of protection over the winter months as we seek to achieve the potentially difficult task of keeping Covid under control while keeping our economy fully open. Indeed, many other countries are already demonstrating the value of Covid certification. It is for those reasons that Cabinet decided this morning to proceed with the laying of the regulations that will bring such a scheme into operation. However, as I have said previously, we are also determined to listen to and, as far as possible, respond to the reasonable concerns of business so that the introduction and practical implementation of the scheme is as smooth as possible. I can confirm therefore that Cabinet this morning agreed a change to our original plans for the scheme's commencement. The new staged approach that we are proposing now is designed to help businesses to adapt to the requirement that the scheme will place upon them and give them a period in which they can operationalise and test their arrangements in practice. I can therefore confirm that, after the legal obligation comes into force at 5am on Friday this week, we intend to allow a further period of slightly more than two weeks until 18 October before any business could face enforcement action for non-compliance. This period, effectively a grace period, will allow businesses to test, adapt and build confidence in the practical arrangements that they will need to put in place to be compliant with the scheme. As I said earlier, the Government is persuaded that a Covid certification scheme will help to mitigate the risk that the virus poses to us, to all of us, over the winter, and that is why we intend to proceed with it. However, the pragmatic compromise that I have just outlined in relation to a staged introduction of the scheme demonstrates, I hope, that we are listening to business about the practical challenges that they face and that we are determined to work with them to overcome those. To conclude, as we move for the first time into a winter with Covid circulating but without any significant restrictions in place, we are, I am pleased to say, in a much better position than we might have hoped for just a few weeks ago. Cases have halfed in the past three weeks, and we hope that that will be followed by a neasing of at least the direct Covid pressure on the NHS. However, there is no room for complacency about the potential impact that we might face this winter. The efforts that have been made by so many over the past month to step up compliance with mitigations and drive-up vaccination rates seem to be working. We have, collectively, halted the surge and brought case numbers down. That is always the more difficult message. Cases are still too high for comfort, so it is vital that we do not let up. We must maintain the progress of the past few weeks. As ever, that has to be a collective endeavour. All of us have a part to play in keeping transmission under control, so I will close, as usual, with a reminder of the three key things that we can all do to protect ourselves and each other. First, please do get vaccinated if you are eligible and have not yet done so. That remains the single most important thing that any of us can do. Second, please test regularly with lateral flow devices. Those can be ordered through the NHS-informed website or collected from a local test site or pharmacy. If you test positive or are identified as a close contact or have symptoms of the virus, please self-isolate and book a PCR test. Thirdly, please comply with the mitigation still in place. We face coverings in indoor public places, shops, public transport and when moving about in hospitality settings. Meet outdoors if you can. I know that this will get harder, obviously, as we move into autumn and winter, but outdoor meetings are still safer. When meeting indoors, open windows, try to keep a safe distance from people in other households, especially indoors, and wash hands and surfaces. All those precautions really do matter. They will help to keep you and those around you safer. As we can see from the data that I have reported today, they are making a difference. Let us all stick with it and hopefully get cases down even further. Thank you. The First Minister will now take questions on the issues raised in her statement. I intend to allow around 40 minutes for questions after which we will move on to the next item of business. It would be helpful if members who wish to ask a question were to press their request to speak buttons now. I call Douglas Ross. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. The statement is correct to say that it is vital that people who can get the vaccine do, and I would encourage everyone who can to go out and get their jag. However, despite the falling case numbers reported today, Scotland's NHS remains in crisis. The A&E figures published this morning continue a very worrying trend. Given the scale of the challenge in Scotland's NHS, I first want to ask Nicola Sturgeon the exact same question that I put to her last week at First Minister's questions that she failed to answer. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine said that we need 1,000 more acute beds. How many of those extra beds has the Scottish Government now identified? Today, will the First Minister tell us how many of the extra beds have been delivered? Turning to other news in the statement, last week we called for a U-turn by the Scottish Government on their international travel plans. SNP ministers stalled and left it so late that many tourism businesses lost out. I have to say that it is welcome that finally the Government has agreed to align the rules with the rest of the UK on this. Today, we do not quite have another U-turn, but the First Minister is clearly conceding that her vaccine passport scheme is still not ready. We could all see this weeks ago, and that is why my party is bringing forward a debate and vote on this tomorrow, calling for the scheme to be halted. Warning after warning for businesses from weeks were ignored by this Government, and only now does Nicola Sturgeon finally admit that this is a botched scheme. In a little over 48 hours' time it will come into force, yet the Government is still publishing vital new information and guidance about how to administer this scheme. The goalposts have shifted. The First Minister has now delayed enforcement by more than two weeks. It is more of the same last-minute, rushed, chaotic planning that we have seen time and time again from this SNP Government. Why did she not listen to businesses and Opposition parties weeks ago who warned that the scheme would not be ready? Is not a scheme that is legally enforced but will not be enforced just adding to the confusion? Is not it about time that the Government cut its losses on the shambles of a scheme and scrapped it altogether? Had I listened over past weeks to Douglas Ross, who has opposed every measure that the Government has introduced to try to stem the rise in Covid cases, we would not be in the position that we are in right now with falling Covid cases. We would probably still be seeing cases rise, because everything from face coverings to continued mitigations Douglas Ross has stood here and opposed. That is just a regular feature of the management of this pandemic. On the issue of Covid certification, I will take that issue first, it is because we have and are listening to businesses that we have announced today a very pragmatic compromise. The scheme is ready and will be introduced on Friday, but businesses understandably want to have a period without the threat of enforcement where they can ensure that their arrangements for compliance are working well or where they think they have to adapt them and have the time to do that. It is because we are listening that we have done that. We come back to the central point. Covid cannot simply be wished away, as Douglas Ross sometimes believes it can. We have to take active measures to get it under control and keep it under control. Vaccine certification is a proportionate, targeted way of doing that, that many, many countries across the world are already doing. Both Scotland in a few weeks, Wales and even Northern Ireland, although they have not yet moved to a mandatory scheme, are encouraging Covid certification. Again, as on many things, it may be soon that the only part of the UK not having a scheme like this is England, although the Prime Minister has not ruled it out over the winter months. We will continue to take the sensible way forward. We did not stall what any responsible Government should do in the face of a pandemic. We considered carefully the balance between the understandable, as I said last week, economic imperative of trying to align across the UK with the equally understandable concerns about the risks to public health in the same way that Wales and, I believe, Northern Ireland have been considering those things carefully. We have come to an on-balance judgment that I think is right. I have candidly said that it is not without its concerns, but we will seek to take other steps to try to mitigate against those concerns and guard against new variants. Finally, on the NHS. The NHS continues to be under pressure. The issue about beds is an important one. There has been a slight increase in recent times in the number of acute beds and we are trying to make sure that we are freeing up capacity in our NHS, including bed capacity, through the range of measures that we are taking. For example, reducing again delayed discharge with support for care packages and moves to care homes through the work that we are doing to avoid unnecessary admission to hospital. Of course, the key and most important thing that we need to do to free up bed capacity in our NHS is to reduce the number, currently sitting just above 1,000, of beds that are occupied by patients with Covid. That is work that is under way intensely across the Government and across the NHS. Although I am not complacent because we have a hard winter ahead of us, if we look at the A&E waiting times still far below what we want them to be but better than they were last week, and on ambulance response times again a slight, very slight easing of the demand pressure and a corresponding improvement over the past week in the performance of our ambulance service. That does not mean that we are out of those difficulties. This is going to be a challenging winter. That is why I and the Government remain so focused on taking the steps to support our NHS face-up to those challenges. Anna Sarwar Presiding Officer, can I start by sending my condolences to all those who have lost a loved one in the last week or indeed throughout this pandemic? The figures published today show that more than one in four A&E patients are waiting more than four hours. We also show that we failed to meet our cancer targets again. Despite the pandemic, cancer remains Scotland's biggest pillar, and mis-targets mean people being diagnosed later, treatment starting later, and chances of survival reduced. What urgent action is the First Minister taking to address that? We also know that the tools to confront the pandemic remain the vaccine, testing and tracing. Given the on-going challenges, the First Minister has not addressed the issues facing test and protect in her statement. We know that test and protect is not working. We have raised the concerns of staff, and we have stated weeks after weeks the facts on the performance. The Government needs to focus on fixing the systems that it already has, but instead it is fixated on creating a new system. There remain practical, legal and ethical concerns around a vaccine path forward. Those comments were repeated this week by the Welsh First Minister, Martin Drakeford. The delay to implementing vaccine passports is welcome, but the issues remain. As the First Minister and I spoke about last week, in order to enter labour conference, we had to present either a vaccine certificate or a negative test. I downloaded my vaccine PDF this week. It was incomplete as it failed to include the details of my first JAG. I know that this is a problem that others have faced too. The app launches in two days. Can the First Minister give a cast iron guarantee that the team will work for everyone? If she is determined to go ahead and I plead with her again to please consider the role of testing as making sure that someone is negative going into a venue, it is still more important than if they are vaccinated. I am going to take those issues in reverse order. On the vaccine certification scheme, there are processes in place to rectify any situation in which somebody's vaccine record is incomplete. On the scale of the vaccine programme, as I have said all along, there will be cases where errors are made or things are not as they should be, and that is why processes are in place. On the issue of testing, and I have always said that it is a legitimate issue to raise, we have not ruled out at a later stage, including a negative test as a part of Covid certification. The reason why we are not doing that at this initial stage is that part of the objective of our Covid certification scheme is to drive up the rates of vaccination as high as we can get them. It is also the case that, although LFD testing, because I repeat the importance of it every week, is extremely important, it is self-reported and therefore there are deficiencies in that, but that is something that I have said. We will keep under review as vaccine rates increase and as the scheme continues. We will continue to listen to the concerns of business, as we have done today, just a point of accuracy. The implementation of the scheme is not being delayed. The scheme is being implemented from 5am on Friday, but we will have a grace period before any business would face enforcement action for non-compliance with the scheme. On test and protect, this is where I just take issue with Anna Sarwar. It is not the case that test and protect is not working. Test and protect is working well and the people who staff test and protect are working incredibly hard. There is no doubt that, of course, when cases are high, test and protect comes under pressure. It is the efforts of test and protect, along with other factors that I spoke about in my statement that are helping to bring cases back under control and drive cases down. Let me take the opportunity again today to say a very heartfelt thank you to every individual who is working in test and protect across the country. They are doing a real service to people across Scotland. Finally, on cancer, which is of vital importance, the figures today—like all of the waiting times figures across our NHS and other the NHS and other parts of the UK remain a challenge. On cancer referrals, today's figures show that referrals on the urgent treatment pathway are now, in the last quarter, back to pre-pandemic levels, which is a positive. That is good in terms of the 31-day standard. The target is being met there. That is the time 31 days from decision to treatment starting. 98 per cent meet that target. The median weight is four days. The 62-day target, which is referral to treatment, is and has been more of a challenge, but more than eight out of 10 patients are being seen within that target. The median weight is 43 days. There is a range of measures being taken to improve performance against the 62-day target, and we will continue to focus on them. Finally, on accident and emergency, as I said earlier, there has been a slight improvement this week. We are not complacent. We need to continue to focus on the measures to improve waiting times and accident and emergency, which involve action right across the NHS, not just in our A&Es. However, while there is much more to do, I would say again that Scotland's A&Es, our core A&E services, are the best performing in the UK. That says to me that, while we have more to do, the steps that are being taken are the right ones, and we need to continue to focus on them. Alex Cole-Hamilton Thank you, Presiding Officer. The First Minister told Douglas Ross that vaccine passports are being brought in to stem the rise of Covid. Last week, Professor Jonathan Montgomery told the Covid-19 Committee of a festival in Cornwall that chose to require vaccine passports on entry. Despite that measure, 5,000 attendees still caught Covid at this event. The night-time industry has taken the Government to court. The Human Rights Commission has expressed grave concerns that it has not seen the evidential base for this scheme, and every Opposition party is opposed to it. The 18-day delay in enforcement is an admission that the Government and businesses are nowhere near ready, and we have evidence that shows that the passports do not even work. Will the First Minister abandon this assault on the right to medical privacy today? I want to do everything that is reasonably possible to keep people and the country as a whole as safe as possible from the risk of Covid over these winter months. Vaccination—this is a point that not just I have made, but everybody makes because it happens to be a fact—vaccination does not eradicate the risk of transmission. Nobody pretends that it does, but vaccination does reduce the risk of transmission. It also significantly reduces the risk of somebody who gets Covid becoming very seriously unwell. The figures that Alex Cole-Hamilton has cited for a festival—I cannot remember the location of the festival—would have been potentially much higher without the protection of vaccination. It is an important part of an overall package of measures to reduce the risk that Covid presents to us. We will continue to work with businesses, we will continue to take pragmatic and sensible steps, but over this winter, as I said earlier on, we are in a much better position than we could have perhaps a few weeks ago ever hoped to be in, but this winter we will pose challenges not just to Scotland but to countries across the world that are greater than any in our lifetimes potentially. We must do everything that we can to get through those challenges as safely as possible. If Covid certification can play even a small part in that, I think that it is better than facing the risk of having to close down certain businesses again over the winter period. Face coverings remain an important mitigation in the fight against Covid-19. It is vital that staff who are asking the public to comply with the law within their places of work do not face abuse. Does the First Minister agree that any form of abuse, threats or violence faced by workers as a result of simply doing their job is completely unacceptable? Can she advise what steps are being taken to support workers in this position? I thank Jackie Dunbar for that question and agree with her wholeheartedly on the two related points that she makes. First, face coverings are a really important mitigation against the transmission of Covid. We have seen some evidence—I know that the publisher has reported just in the last couple of days—that evidence of that. It is the case that, if you wear a face covering, you are helping to protect somebody else from the risk of you transmitting the virus to them. If they wear a face covering, they are offering you the same protection. I appeal to people across the country to continue. I know that it is inconvenient and not particularly pleasant, but it is a really important measure to help with that collective protection. Secondly, it is absolutely vital that people do that and understand the reasons to do that and do not in any way abuse staff who are working in the settings where face coverings are still required. We have been very consistent in that message. I know that businesses across those sectors are doing a great deal to support their staff. I think that all of us should take the opportunity to thank staff working in those front-line occupations. I thank them for the job that they are doing and the contribution that they are making. All of us recognise that we all have a personal responsibility to do the right things to keep Covid under control. The Night Time Industries Association Scotland confirmed that it was instructing its lawyers to start proceedings against the Covid-19 vaccine certificate programme policy. Does the First Minister accept that her Government rushed through those deeply flawed proposals without meaningful consultation, and today we have heard that they are having to extend deadlines and even give a grace period? No, I do not. It is really not consistent or credible for the Conservatives to come here week after week after week and say, listen to businesses and do what they are asking, and then when we do exactly that for them to complain and moan about us doing exactly that, this is a pragmatic way forward. I think that it will help with the implementation. It is not a delay to implementation. It is a sensible measure to give businesses once the legal obligation comes into force, time to test and adapt the arrangements that they are putting in place, because those arrangements that will be set out further in guidance later today take a proportionate and a common sense approach. Any organisation, any individual in the country that we live in has the right to take legal action, and I would never criticise any organisation doing that if they think they have a basis for that. Obviously, it would not be appropriate for me to comment, but of course the Government thinks carefully about the basis for all of the steps that it takes in relation to Covid and will continue to do so. One thing I would say about all of the steps that we have had to take over the past 18 months and are still required to take, and it might be worth all of us, including me, reflecting on this in the debates that we have in this chamber, is that everybody, even if we disagree on the wisdom or otherwise of some of these steps, we are all trying to do the right things for the right reasons to keep the country as safe as possible from Covid. Perhaps the tone of our discussions would benefit from all of us, as I say, including me, remembering that. Julian Martin, to be followed by Alex Rowley. I quite a number of my constituents work internationally, as one would expect from a constituency in the north-east. Can I ask the First Minister for an update on the inclusion of vaccinations administered abroad on the Scottish vaccination certificate system? By the end of this week, people who have had a dose administered in another part of the common travel area and a second dose perhaps in Scotland will be able to upload their first dose record through NHS Inform and access their full vaccination record and QR code. For the purposes of domestic certification, we will accept proof of doses from each country in which somebody was vaccinated. The First Minister talked earlier about delayed discharge. Does the First Minister accept that many of those people who are being signposted into care homes do not want to go to care homes, do not have to go to care homes, but are having to go to care homes because there is not a care package for them in their own home? Is the First Minister aware of, for example, of the unacceptable and growing waiting lists for people who have been assessed to get a care package but are not able to get one? All of that is going to put massive pressure on the NHS throughout this winter. Will the First Minister consider looking at a focused task group that can look at what actions need to be taken to address this emergency now? We cannot wait three years for a national care service. We must tackle this problem now. We are taking a range of actions to tackle the issue of delayed discharge now. The Health Secretary and I, just a few days ago, were discussing those actions in detail with our officials. That is about partly increasing the resource available for social care, which we are doing and will continue to do over this Parliament. It is absolutely about respecting the choice of people who are in home. We all agree that, where somebody has no medical or clinical requirement to be in hospital, it is not the best place for them. Supporting appropriate discharge is really important, and where that is care at home needs to be supported. However, in many cases, a care home will be the best place for somebody to be. Again, rightly or wrongly, over the course of the pandemic, understandably, some families will have concerns about their relatives being admitted to care homes. We also need to assure people that care homes are good and appropriate places for people to be. There is a range of work under way here. We are facing a challenge, as we have warned for the past two years, around the social care workforce, which is partly, in large part, being exacerbated by the impact of Brexit right now, as we are seeing across many different sectors. That will continue to be an added challenge in this area over the next months and possibly beyond that. However, we are taking a range of steps as we build towards the national care service that this Parliament will, of course, debate in full as that process develops. We have more members wishing to be taken than have already been taken. I would be very grateful if we could pick up the pace or otherwise regrettably members will not be able to put us a question. I call Bob Dorris to be followed by Pam Gossel. First Minister, I welcome the Department of Mobile Covid-19 vaccination units to university campuses and halls across Greater Glasgow and Clyde, such as Myrannu, where I lived in my constituency last Saturday, and today at Glasgow Caledonian University. I commend the efforts of universities, the NHS and, of course, students to get vaccinated. Can I ask how the Scottish Government is seeking to monitor the vaccination levels among our student population specifically, including at large halls of residence, to ensure that all we can to make sure that our student communities are as safe as possible? As Bob Dorris and other members will be aware, the statistics on vaccine uptake are primarily collected by Public Health Scotland and reported by them and by the Government, according to age group rather than by employment or education. The high uptake in age groups, where there are likely to be a lot of students, would suggest to us that uptake among students is high, but we continue to work very hard with universities and colleges on a range of measures to help ensure that students get vaccinated so that we are maximising protection as the new term develops. Drop-in clinics continue to operate, and individuals are able to rearrange appointments at time and locations to suit them. We are in regular dialogue with Universities Scotland and Colleges Scotland and have appointed a single point of contact within each health board for higher and further education institutions, and we will continue to engage with health boards to support vaccine delivery for both international and home-based students. I have been contacted by a concerned parent who, as a result of the pandemic, was not sure whether her daughter, Lily, was allowed to attend a GP surgery for assistance. Subsequence is that she was passed from one prior practitioner to another, and now her daughter faces further health complications as a result. Therefore, can I ask the First Minister in light of reported difficulties in accessing person GP appointments? How can she ensure that people who need help can be seen in person as soon as possible? First, on the individual case, if the member wishes to write to me or to the health secretary, we will look into that. It would not be helpful or appropriate for me to seek to comment on that without having much more of the detail. In general, face-to-face appointments are available with GPs, but it is the case that some of the arrangements that have been put in place during the pandemic, and because of the pandemic, near me, for example, online consultation service and telephone consultations will, for some people, be more appropriate. Therefore, GPs who are working extremely hard and we are deeply grateful to them for what they are doing, it is appropriate that GPs continue to strike that balance. Of course, we want to see face-to-face opportunities increase as we come out of the pandemic and recover from it, and we will continue to work with the BMA and GPs across the country to ensure that that is the case. I refer the First Minister to the Covid mitigation measures in schools and ask when those might be reviewed, because it also impacts on many voluntary organisations such as Elstons Scouts and My Constituency, which cannot meet on-school premises. That is becoming especially pressing as winter comes forward and makes meeting outdoors impracticable. Let me assure Christine Grahame and other members that all of those mitigations remain under regular review. Indeed, the advisory subgroup on education considered the mitigations currently in place within schools at their meeting just last week. That included the use of schools for community purposes. We are considering that advice alongside stakeholders at present and will provide an update as soon as possible. However, the mitigations that are still in place are in place for an important reason, because they are at this stage considered necessary to keep that down more pressure on cases. Brian Whittle, to be followed by Stuart McMillan. Last week's Covid recovery committee, a Public Health Scotland submission, highlighted a significant disparity in vaccine uptake relating to ethnicity, up to 20 per cent difference in some groups. What the Scottish Government is doing to encourage vaccine uptake across all those groups, and what work was done to measure the impact on that disparity that introducing a vaccine passport may have? We continue to work to make sure that uptake levels are high, not just across the population as a whole but in different groups in the population. The issue around potentially lower rates of uptake among our minority communities has been a consideration all along. That is why we have worked, for example, with particular faith groups. That is why we have taken steps to ensure that vaccine clinics in some parts of the country are situated within places of worship. I have cited this example before in the chamber in my constituency, Glasgow Central Mosque, which has been doing a fantastic job as a vaccination clinic. It is important to stress that uptake rates across all different groups in society are high, much higher than we might have thought they would be at the start of the programme, but there are variations. We will continue to do everything that we can to level that out to make sure that every group has the highest possible rates of uptake. Equity and other considerations have, of course, been part of the planning of the vaccine certification scheme and will continue to be so. Stuart McMillan, to be followed by Gillian Mackay. To ask the First Minister what assurances will be provided to Scottish group of fans living outside of Scotland who have received both vaccines, that they will have access to Hamden for the upcoming international qualifying matches? Proof of a full course of vaccination will be accepted at venues for domestic purposes. Proof of vaccination will be accepted from across the UK in crown dependencies, as well as from members of the EU Covid certification scheme. Tourists from other nations, for example, the United States, will need to provide the same proof of vaccination status that is currently accepted for entry into the UK. We want people visiting Scotland to be able to go to football matches or night time venues, but we want to do everything possible to make sure that they, just like Scottish residents, can do so as safely as possible. Gillian Mackay, to be followed by John Mason. I am concerned about the decision to follow the UK Government's approach and end the requirement for double vaccinated people travelling from non-readless countries to Scotland to take a PCR test on departure. I appreciate the reasons for taking this decision that the First Minister has set out. However, this will weaken our ability to prevent new variants from entering the country, which could still pose a serious risk to Scotland's Covid recovery. Last week, I asked the First Minister to provide MSPs with the scientific evidence underpinning any such decision. Will she now do so, and could she provide the timescale for announcement of the additional safeguards that she set out in her statement? There is no particular scientific evidence beyond what I have said. This is a balanced judgment, and I absolutely accept the concerns that Gillian Mackay has set out. I share many of them, and I have tried to be as candid about the difficulty of the judgment as I can be and the reasons why we have arrived where we have. If there is a non-aligned position across the UK, simply because of travel patterns, the danger—in fact, the likelihood—is that we would end up in a situation where people travelling back to Scotland would simply route through English airports, so we would lose the public health benefit of testing anyway. However, in the process, we would also incur damage to our own aviation and travel sector. This is a pragmatic judgment. On the issue of alternative surveillance measures, we are discussing that with Public Health Scotland. We are looking at potentially asking people who have returned to Scotland on a sample basis to take part in testing. We will set that out as quickly as possible, because it is really important that we continue to have good surveillance through PCR so that we can also do genomic sequencing, and we are very keen to do that quickly. The one thing that I have said to reassure travellers is that that would not be at additional cost to travellers, but that we will set out the detail of that just as quickly as possible. John Mason, to be followed by Rona Mackay. The First Minister mentioned funding, and I wonder if she can say how much the Scottish Government has spent on Covid so far and how much it has been received from Westminster. I am happy to put the detail of that into SPICE or report it in the normal ways, but we have allocated all of the Covid funding notified by the UK Government towards our pandemic response. The most recent formal allocation in the autumn budget revision was published earlier this week. The UK Government has confirmed £13.3 billion in additional Covid consequentials to support the pandemic response, £8.6 billion in 2020-21 and £4.7 billion in 2021-22. All of that has been allocated by the Scottish Government. We have also received an indication of up to £520 million of further support for health, but that is subject to treasury confirmation, and so that has not yet been formally added to Scottish Government budgets. To ask the First Minister what measures are in place to help tenants who have fallen behind in rent as a result of coronavirus and as a result of tenants who may be at risk of eviction. Right throughout the pandemic, we have done everything we can to support tenants generally and in particular to support any who may be facing the threat of eviction. Councils have now been allocated £10 million to give grants to tenants who have Covid-related rent arrears and are consequently at risk of eviction. That brings our total pandemic support to tenants to almost £39 million. I think that additional money will make a big difference, but we will continue to consider all ways in which we can provide practical support. The legal obligation to present vaccine certification to enter large events in nightclubs still comes into effect at 5 am on Friday. I can ask the First Minister the question that I raised with her two weeks ago. Many of my self-scotland constituents work in England, often for the NHS, so that is where they were vaccinated. As a result, they cannot automatically access a vaccine certificate from NHS Scotland. Will they be able to do so by Friday? Will their vaccination in England automatically be on their NHS Scotland records by 5 am on Friday? The scheme will recognise people who are vaccinated in other countries. That includes the rest of the UK and the common travel area, and as long as they were vaccinated with an MHRA-approved vaccine. Work has been done in partnership with other parts of the UK to ensure that that will be recognised. As with any aspect of the vaccination programme, I am not going to stand here and say that no individual will ever face any difficulties in schemes, whether it is the vaccination programme itself or a certification scheme. It would not be reasonable to say that, but there are processes in place to ensure that these things work well and we will continue to support them as the scheme comes into force and as it develops in the weeks ahead. Despite the severe consequences of a Covid case on board a CalMac ferry, earlier this month CalMac stated that compliance had dropped to around 50 per cent in some routes in terms of mask wearing. I continue to hear anecdotal evidence about that. I appreciate that it is certainly not the job of CalMac crews to enforce the law, but what more can be done to make ferry passengers, including, particularly, perhaps visitors aware of what the law is? The recent incidents on ferries are obviously concerning and they are a reminder. There are many reminders that the virus is still circulating, so we all need to continue to take care and think about our own behaviour and compliance with important mitigations. CalMac is already taking some steps to seek to improve compliance on ferries. For example, it has increased the frequency of passenger announcements on face coverings and has continued to promote adherence to other baseline measures. Of course, our guidance on travelling safely on public transport is available through their website and social media channels. On top of worrying A&E figures and the lowest number of hospital beds for a decade, staffing levels are of huge concern, despite the earlier bravado from the health secretary. An amazing staffer at breaking point in NHS Dumfries and Galloway with 212 nursering and midwifery post-vacant, that is 10.3 per cent of posts, a record high, and those worrying staff shortages are repeated across Dumfries and Galloway and getting worse. We have repeatedly called for an NHS winter plan to be published as soon as possible. Can the First Minister confirm if there will be a plan published and if so, when? The NHS's planning for winter has been planning for winter, is planning for winter and continues to plan for winter each and every single day. There are record numbers of people working in our national health service across Scotland. This Government has presided over increases across almost all professional groups in our national health service and we will continue to support increased staffing over the lifetime of this Parliament as we implement the NHS recovery plan. Yes, I will concede that it is difficult to recruit right now to health and care services just as it is difficult to recruit to haulage companies just as it is difficult to recruit for agricultural businesses, picking fruit and vegetables, for example. The reason for that, which is why it is a bit galling to have this question posed by a Conservative member, is the damage done and now being felt by Brexit. Perhaps a bit of humility on these matters from the Conservative benches would go a long, long way. David Torrance, to be followed by Edward Mountain. Thank you, Presiding Officer. It has become clear that a travel industry is still facing serious challenges and, on a daily basis, with a customer uncertainty having a devastating impact on our traditional high street agencies. My discussions with some of those agencies in Kirkcaldy area have revealed that, although most have reported a healthy number of bookings for next year, the majority have serious doubts regarding their ability to continue operating until that time. First Minister, what steps can the Scottish Government take to help them through this difficult period and protect local jobs? First Minister, I certainly recognise the significant challenges that have been experienced by travel agents as a result of the various restrictions that have been in place over much of the past 18 months. Since the start of the pandemic, though, we have done everything that we can to support travel agents that have benefited from a range of support, including the travel agent support fund, the strategic framework business fund grant scheme, restart grants, non-domestic rates relief and, of course, through the UK Government, although that is soon coming to an end, furlough payments for staff. Without further consequentials from the UK Government, we do not have funding available to direct additional support towards travel agents or others in the travel sector right now. We are actively engaging with the UK Government, though, around a potential additional package of support specifically for travel agents, but so far have not received a response, but we will continue to press that with them. The First Minister will be aware of the enormous strain on the provision of mental health treatment across the country, which has been exasperated by Covid. The chief executive of NHS Highlands has told me that personnel shortages are the problem, not funding, and that she is not happy with the offering in terms of responsiveness and support. Can the First Minister confirm what action is being taken to secure specialist support in the Highlands from outwith NHS Highlands before more constituencies lose their lives? Edwin Mountain is right that funding is vital, but if funding is not able to secure the recruitment of staff, it is not going to have the desired effect. There is a range of support in place to help with recruitment across the national health service and social care, and we will continue to support NHS Highlands and other health boards in recruiting the staff that they need. I come back to a point that I made earlier. It was the case that across both the NHS and social care, just as across the economy more generally, many people who came to Scotland from other European countries provided great contributions and support, and many of them have now been lost to our public services and to our economy as a result of the wrong-headed ending of freedom of movement, which we are all now paying a significant price for. I take my responsibility for supporting the NHS to deal with these challenges, but perhaps Conservative members could take this message to their bosses in Westminster and spell out to them in no uncertain terms the damage Brexit is doing to our national health service and social care across the country. That concludes the First Minister's statement. Covid-19 updates. There will be a very brief suspension before the next item of business.


The Aussies are coming! Welcome to Israel! Welcome to Jaffa! The Aussies are coming! Welcome to Israel! The Aussies are coming! Welcome to the Anzac Memorial Center in Beresheva! Ambassador, I've got the word out around Israel. The Aussies are coming! Aussies! Welcome to Israel! Welcome to the Makabia!


Okay ladies and gentlemen, we're going to start with the next presentation and it gives me great pleasure to introduce to you Margaret Jordan. Now Margaret is an accredited genealogist and has a background in science and mathematics and having told me in a second that I'm at school in County Cork. She is now a professional genealogist. Part of her time she actually works on the Ireland Y DNA project. Now I've just heard from Jean-Pierreau about some of the DNA structure of the Irish population. And that of course is an academic study and Margaret actually is running the Y DNA project which has over 6,000 members in the project. So here to tell us about the Y DNA project and what it actually tells us is Margaret Jordan, please give her a warm welcome. It's a pleasure to speak to you today about the Ireland Y DNA project. Now the Ireland Y DNA project was set up in 2006 because at that time there were very few Irish surname projects at all. And there was also the genographic project where people could do a 12 marker DNA test but there was nowhere for those results to go for the Irish males. So there was a double reason there for setting up the Ireland Y DNA project. Now just going back to that timeframe, Family 3 DNA was the company chosen for the project. And it started off very small as you can imagine and over time it has grown. But this is just an example here of a certificate that the genographic project produced back in 2005. You can see maybe that they only tested 12 markers and these 12 markers or 12 YSTRs were enough to predict your Y half the group. And the Y half the group that's predicted is R1B which is defined by the SNP M343. So I'll be talking about half the groups and I'll be talking about SNPs. To some extent I'll be talking about markers or YSTRs. Now back in the early days, in the early 2000s to maybe 2010, all we've talked about really were YSTRs and broad based half the groups. But in more recent years we've had a huge development in the SNP area. So we're transitioning if you like from the YSTRs to the SNPs. But both are used extensively and used together to complement each other. And I'll be showing you a little bit about how that happens as well. Now it was an exciting time actually in the mid to late 2000s. Because Trinity College were producing a lot of research papers and we amateurs, volunteers were just swallowing this stuff. It was fantastic, I mean we had nothing else to go on for Irish Y DNA. But Trinity College were feeding us all these papers so there were major discussions about the results and so on. So it was quite an exciting time when Trinity were doing all that research. And all those papers are available free online now. But at the time I think some of them might have been behind a paywall and we were all scampering to try and get hold of them. Now as I said, back then a 12 marker prediction whether it was from Family 3DNA or the General Graphic Project was enough to give you a wide half the group prediction. And it became quite clear early on that most men in Ireland were in the R1B half the group. We do have a few in the R1A. We do have some in I1 and I2 and very small amounts possibly other half the groups. But as I said it became very clear early on that we were focusing more on this little area here. But that R1B is a very ancient snip and you can see here on the chart that quite a lot of Europe is defined by R1B and the darker the colour being higher the percentage of the men in that area who have R1B. Now it goes up to over 80% in Ireland and also on the western fringe of Europe. So it's very common in this part of Europe. Now in the project this is reflected over the years we've consistently had about 80% or 81% R1B in the project. We've had a smaller percentage of I1, 6% approximately and I2, 7% and then smaller percentages again of the other half the groups that occur in the project. For example R1A is 2% and G is 1%, E2% and J1%. Now I won't be talking about the smaller percentages over here in the top. I'll be focusing mostly on R1B with some references to I1 and I2 as they're the next biggest half the groups in the project. Now Eupedia is a great resource which I've used an awful lot I must say especially in preparation for this talk because it has an analysis of all the major why half the groups and mitochondria DNA half the groups and it throws in information about the migration and the history of the weaker and so on so if you're interested in following up on the origins and migrations of the half the groups I would suggest Eupedia.com. Now here Eupedia shows Ireland and in fact they got their data from our project so it should correspond with the data I've given you. But if you look at the comparisons there the highest areas of R1B apart from Ireland would be Normandy and Wales and Scotland. The western fringes of Europe have the highest proportion of R1B. Now you can do the same for the other half the groups. In my talk I combined I2A and I2B into just I2A because the terminology for I2 has changed several times over the years so to keep it simple I'm not treating I2A and I2B separately. So that's just something you can look up there on Eupedia as well to compare the different half the groups from the different countries. So we started off with R1B which is here and now I'm not very good at archaeology and paleolithic and mesolithic and neolithic are terms that don't come naturally to me except to say that paleolithic is very old you know and mesolithic is more recent but you can see how far back you have to go for the R1B or the M343 SNP so that really isn't helping us very much with our YDNA in terms of telling people that OMR won't be you know we've done a lot further than that nowadays but it took us several years to come further on and we came further on first of all by talking about M269 and M269 could be I don't know could be 10,000 years old we don't have precise dates for these SNPs which is something we're all working towards but M269 is the prediction that family 3DNA tends to give an awful lot of people so if you do a YDNA test and you get a prediction of M269 that's not telling you an awful lot back in the early 2000s I would have said yes it was telling us as much as we could find out but now it's really just the tip of the iceberg it's you know you would need more information and just on that diagram I've you know I've left out a lot of steps here I couldn't put them all in but by the time you get down here it splits up into U106 and we have some U106 in the project not very much it's less than 4% I won't be dealing with that today I could have but I think that you know I had to focus my energies on certain aspects and I figured that this side would be the one that would be most relevant to most people the P312, the Proto Italo Kelto Germanic hasn't yet got to Ireland really we're still way out there in the middle Bronze Age perhaps you know it's 20 ancient now the emphasis as I said was on the YSTRs in the 2000s and we went from 12 from the General Graphic Project and Family Treaty really always did 37 markers but then later on 67 markers became available only in 2011 actually did 111 YSTRs on markers become available so we've been going up the scale all the time trying to crunch the numbers with these YSTRs now they can't do it all by themselves but I personally believe in testing 67 YSTRs some people say 37 is enough and you go straight to snips but from my experience not everybody is going to do a lot of snip testing you know from the 8000 we have the project we have about 3000 men who are RM269 and they're sitting there with no further snip testing so that's the reality so getting people to do 67 markers at least with those you can start to try and predict what snips they would be positive on coming to that a bit more later on but with 67 markers there are certain values on some of those markers which can point you in the right direction it can tell you for sure you'll be positive on a particular snip well it almost can in some cases but in a lot of cases it will certainly give you enough information maybe to jump forward to doing not maybe the next snip that Family Treaty and I recommend but a couple of jumps forward and you learn a lot more about your YHAPLO group the position of your YDNA on the YHAPLO group so snips of course are opening new ways of grouping people and refining positions on the YHAPLO tree and I think other people have used the term snip tsunami and this is very true about years ago we were getting new snips all the time and it wasn't possible for us to figure out how they all fitted in so we had to do some work and do a lot of testing of people to see who was positive on them and who was negative so that they could be added to the YHAPLO tree but really since the big Y has come along I think Family Treaty and I has taken over a lot of that heavy lifting so we don't have to do as much work as before but we weren't trying to get different people to do testing to try and figure out who was positive and who was negative so a lot of that has been done by Family Treaty and I know so of course with all the changes that have been going on it was quite simple in the beginning it was just anybody, any male, not to be male who had Irish ancestry on his male line could join the project but now because we have so many different kinds of tests for example if you did an autosomal DNA test with 23andMe and you've been given a YHAPLO group prediction that is not enough to entitle you to join the Ireland's YDNA project because you can't transfer that YDNA result you can transfer the latest form of the generographic project results now the latest type of generographic results are all SNF results Geno 2.0 is what it's called some of you might have done that have you done the Geno 2.0 test? Just a few, do you know about it? Yeah? Okay, so the Geno 2.0 is really based on anthropology but I suppose with all the new SNPs that have been found over the years they are providing results for SNPs which are closer to the modern timeframe but it is a research project and it's more geared for the scientific community to understand the migration of people you know the YDNA out of Africa spread across the world and in different populations you have different types of YDNA so that's really what that study is about but because family tree DNA was the lab it isn't anymore but it was the lab for the generographic project you could transfer for free your generographic when you still can transfer your generographic 2.0 results to family tree DNA and if you have an Irish main line please transfer them to the Ireland YDNA project you know please make sure you join that project now we also encourage men of course to join their surname project that is critical because the surname administrators, surname project administrators are the most familiar with your particular surname now if there isn't a surname project for your surname of course the next step is to join the Ireland YDNA project but the surname projects are the best because they can look at your results within a small context we are a huge project we can't really look at everybody's individual result and compare them with other people with the same surname we can't do that what we do is we tend to group people by SNPs so it's not by surname it's broad groups based on SNPs so I think I've gone over this the prerequisites for joining the project are that you have to have a YDNA test you have to be male it has to be a test that's transferable to family tree DNA now if you don't have knowledge of your paternal line that doesn't restrict you from joining if you have a close match at 67 markers with other men in the project or other men with Irish surnames you are entitled to join because we want to try and help you that's our project we deal with individuals we may be a huge project but our main focus is the individual and their needs if you are looking for a biological male line we would be delighted to have you in the project so that you can explore whether it is a male Irish line or not and so on but if you if you just vaguely think you might have an Irish line you have to know something about it you have to have documented evidence within say the last 500 years there's no point saying a thousand years ago my ancestors might have been in Ireland we need something more we're focused on a genealogical time frame so that would be about 500 years and also there's no point telling me that you did an ancestry autosomal DNA test and you're told you're 60% Irish not good enough we need it to be on the Y line even if it's only 1% or less we need it to be on the Y line so just keep that in mind now as I said we focus on individuals we want to emphasise that we talk to people we have an activity feed you might be familiar with that like a Facebook sort of messaging system on a lot of the projects and we are very active on that and people ask questions we administrators try to answer them but other members try to answer them too and members talk to each other and they find out more I mean people would say I haven't a clue I got my results what do I know we can look at their results and we can advise them and then other people can learn from that advice as well and we do deal with people by email of course as well but more I find that people are using the activity feed they feel happier dealing with it there in that context but anyway we relate very closely to why happenable projects surname projects and why DNA research and regional why geographic projects and I just want to refer to these in turn I've mentioned the Irish surname projects that's fairly obvious I think and the why happenable projects are becoming more important as people do more and more SNP testing it's becoming so specific that there are projects for particular SNPs and if you are a person with that particular SNP you go for that project as well you can join as many projects as you like but the main types of project would be the surname projects the why happenable projects and the geographic projects which is what we are now the why DNA research there I put that in because it's the community it's the genetic genealogy enthusiasts it's the people who do the research like the previous speaker and the speaker coming next I'm sort of in the middle the amateur in the middle but it's everybody contributing I mean there are a lot of people involved like Mike Walsh, Alex Williamson Nigel McCartney you've heard some of these names mentioned already but they're all working in the background and we all benefit from their efforts because they're all helping us to understand what's going on with the SNPs it's particularly with the SNPs nowadays this is just about our project it started off in 2006 and we're nearly at 8,000 members it sounds like a lot of people but the majority would not be from Ireland not living in Ireland and I think I would like to put out a call here for Irish men to do a why DNA test if you haven't done it already we really do need your participation in the project because we have lots of Americans we have Australians, we have Canadians we have some Irish men I can't give you an exact figure because I would have to go to everybody's account and with 8,000 people I couldn't possibly but from my dealing with people I know that the majority come from outside of Ireland and they would love to reconnect with their Irish male line in Ireland and it would be fantastic so to have more Irish males who are living in Ireland and know where their ancestors came from joining the project and joining their surrounding projects now as I said we have nearly 8,000 members and most of those live outside the country and we have about 3,000 people who are stuck on this RN 269 who haven't done any more slip testing we also have some people who have only done 12 markers about 766 I think these must be from that original general graphic project they transferred from the first general graphic project and didn't go any further and that's so long ago now they probably lost interest and they're not going to do any more but if any of you are one of these people here please do more testing we have a few here in 25 and we have 1,929 and 37 markers that I would prefer to see more in the 67 marker bracket but we have quite a few and at 111 we have 2,305 and the good news here is that we have over 1,000 people who have done the big why I was actually surprised when I saw that figure myself because I didn't expect it but that's good that shows we're going somewhere and as I said there is some chance for interest from the genome 2.0 but they could actually be included over there as well because when people transfer their genome 2.0 results it's all SNP results it doesn't allow you to compare your result directly the way the markers do so you're sitting there in the project and we can't do anything with your result so if you've transferred a genome 2.0 result please do SNP to sorry do 37 or 67 markers so that you can compare your results with other men now I mentioned earlier that in the 2000s we were excited at the papers coming from Trinity but we also got very excited in 2010 when the first Irish genome was sequenced I must always remember that day when I discovered it I had just got off the ferry from Cork to Swansea and I was in the local McDonald's restaurant you know I was eagerly checking my email and I got the news everybody was chatting about this and I was feeling oh my god one day I go away you know everybody is talking about this but anyway it was an exciting time again we've had several exciting moments so this is one of them when we got the Irish genome sequenced and now it turned out to be L21 which is a SNP further down than the SNPs I've shown you so far I've shown you the M343 down to M269 and I showed you it goes down to P312 and you go down further again and I'll be showing you diagrams with that to the L21 now L21 was quite well established at that point so it wasn't that the SNP was new but it was exciting that an Irish genome had been sequenced and it was L21 now I find the comment here I quoted it from the paper none of the five markers now they mean SNPs here none of the five SNPs defining known subgroups of R1B S145 that's a different name for L21 could be found in our individual indicated that it potentially belongs to and as yet undefined branch of L21 now they're saying there were five branches of L21 in 2010 I don't know if anybody could name those five branches I could name two straight away M222 had already been discovered and L21 also L159.2 in fact was the third and I think L193 and L19 sorry start again L195 there the five I read the paper afterwards again to find those SNPs so that was before the SNPs tsunami so the SNPs tsunami hasn't been on another go in terms of all these branches of the white half-breed tree being discovered now just to give you some information on L21 again you can see the same pattern here the darker areas are to the west very much focused on Ireland and the western coast of Britain and France Normandy there again and the figure here says that the darkest areas have over 60% L21 now we find that is mirrored in the Ireland Widenay project so we're getting closer and closer to splitting this white half-breed tree into more interesting branches that eventually hopefully will come down to surname lines we're getting closer now this is the kind of follow-up diagram to the original diagram I was showing you you know we had the M343 M269 P312 and down here to L21 so our project focused quite a lot on L21 because the majority of members belonged to that branch of the white half-breed tree and since then another SNP below that called DF13 was found and our new focus is on branches below DF13 because as I quote here from I think it was white full which describes almost everything below L21 according to white brows now DF63 over there on the right does occur to a very very very small extent in the project but it's mostly MacFarlane in Scottish surnames and our focus is definitely on DF13 so another diagram here which is a kind of schematic diagram I don't claim to include all the SNPs on this part of the white half-breed tree but I'm including the main ones and the branches that I want to focus on for example here DF21 I've given numbers here rather than percentages they may look like very small numbers to you but they can compare across like in DF13 we have two about it's changing all the time because it's a dynamic project 213 are DF21 164 are FGC11134 and we have 20 who are FGC5494 and now I didn't put in a number here because this is like an umbrella for the branches down here this was only found recently to cover all of these other branches so we have in the project we have nine people in this group and we have 253 in the Z253 group and 111 in the Z255 group and over here on to this newly discovered umbrella SNP if you like it covers all of these which originally were sort of directly connected under DF13 until this SNP was found and we have 31 DF41 1135 DF49 and the reason for that is because underneath it you have the M222 SNP which most people would be familiar with the North West Ireland SNP now M123.5 surprisingly we have 36 and Z251.31 and so on over and on and so just from the project we have countered the number of people in each of these subgroups in the project I emphasise it's only what we have in the project because there's a DF21 project a Y half global project which would be entirely DF21 people and it would be able to break up DF21 into all the subbranches and so on as far as they can possibly go now in blue I've listed the branches for which we have subgroups in the project and in red I have highlighted the ones I'm going to talk about I can't really talk about them all but the biggest ones are perhaps the ones with some interesting things to say so DF49 I'll talk a bit more about and Z253 and FGC11134 and this one here DF21 so I'll just give you a little bit extra on those it won't be comprehensive but it'll just be delving a little bit deeper into them now as I mentioned DF49 is the largest part of the Z39589 and why is that? because M222 is the snip which is down below DF49 and M222 was a snip that was known about back in 2006 so it's been very heavily researched and it's very common in the area on the map now you might extend that area in Ireland a little bit that was an older map but with M222 I've said it's easy to predict it based on the markers or the YSTRs it has distinctive values on certain markers which enable people to say straight away oh yes you will be M222 if you test but the problem with the people who are M222 is that even if they go up to 111 markers they will be matching lots and lots of different surnames it doesn't help to distinguish between one surname and another in a lot of cases it's just there are so many people with the same kind of results and that can be the problem with markers but big Y and Y Hacker Group projects are working on this and they have gone much further than M222 at this stage and here's my diagram for that I've said, we're talking about DF49 and you come down to M222 and then that breaks up into other branches and this branch here is the most common one in the Ireland YTNA project we have 87 people or S658 and then you come down here to DF105 we didn't sort out any groups here we went down to this level and you can see here even at this level we're able to subdivide and this is only the tip of the iceberg because we're a broad group we can't really deal with every individual SNP but I decided I would just examine one of them I would look at S588 and before I do that though I should mention that we are getting down to the genealogical timeframe and a man called Ian McDonald of Stratatide University is one of the people that has been trying to estimate ages of SNPs and in his analysis he has M222 with the best estimate of 310 BC for the origin of it and a 95% confidence level between 871 BC and 114 AD now we're not saying these are absolutely correct they may be proved to be wrong but it's like a working model at the moment and then you come all the way down here through these SNPs down to DF105 and you find that we're down to 214 AD approximately but that's good news because we're getting closer and closer to be able to use these SNP results in looking at surnames now again another diagram you'd be sick of my charts this is DF105 and I said I was going to look at S588 where we have 77 members and I just added in some of the age estimates by Ian McDonald and here it's approximately 483 AD I emphasised approximately then you come down through several more steps and you get down to 181742 which is approximately 899 AD so we're nearly approaching 1000 AD when many surnames started now from personal communication with Mike McNally who's the administrator of the Gormley project he was able to tell me that from big wide he is working on the connection between say Graham and McNally for example and he has done a lot of work by reading the manuscripts and looking at the ancient genealogies I'm certainly leaving that to him and other people but I'll just say here that we're getting down to the level from big wide and SNP testing that you can start to use the results to get down to the surname level and see how those surnames are or are not connected and there would be a lot of work with people in the future studying the annals and trying to work out if the annals are correct or do they fit what we're finding out from the DNA that was my example for DF 49 a little bit of a run through because I thought that was an important one to do now the next one I chose is the Z253 and you can see it's 68% of the umbrella SNP there Z said 1-0 and why is that? You might remember that I said that L226 was one of the first SNPs that we discovered it was one of those 5 branches that they knew about when they sequenced the Irish genome in 2010 so a lot of research has been going on on L226 you can see here that we have 55 people who are at L226 some of those have gone further and they are positive for the next SNP and then down here you have another SNP so L226 has been very heavily researched and some of the others not so well researched but the point I want to make there is that we are moving forward all the time with SNPs and getting closer and closer to the modern day now the L226 SNP I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with especially O'Brien project there I'm treading carefully here if I'm wrong correctly L226 was discovered in 2009 from the largest part of the project for that it's easy to identify from markers so that's handy as well so if you have done your 67 markers the project administrator of the O'Brien project will be able to tell you yes you are going to be at L226 and it seems to be one of those SNPs that originated in Ireland I haven't discovered too many of them now may not have originated here but it's definitely very prevalent in those areas so I leave that answer to the O'Brien project there my other focus is on the DF21 now we have I've shown you here a diagram of different branches again the blue are the ones we have groups far in the Ireland YDNA project but again there will be separate why half the group projects for many of these for example DF25 you know is a very old SNP and there will be a lot of sub branches here now I'm not talking about that one I think the two I'm talking about here are going to be Z16 281 and Z300 because you can actually attach those to the ancient genealogies but before I do that sorry I should mention another exciting moment is when we got the ancient DNA results from Dan Bradley and his Trinity group when he in 2016 published the paper that found that of the three men who had YDNA analysis done from the Rathlin Island burial site, the Bronze Age burial site because we're dealing with ancient remains it wouldn't be possible to analyze the YDNA fully but they found that one man was L21 one you could go further you could say it was DF13 and the third man was DF21 which is great of course you'd love to know which branch of L21 he was but because the DNA wasn't able to tell us that we don't know now I've read somewhere in the analysis of M222 they're still waiting for their first ancient DNA man with M222 even though there's been so much research done on M222 they still haven't got any ancient DNA relating to that sniff anyway the two branches I wanted to talk about briefly are the Kingdom of our Gala it's the three colors I don't know if anybody is familiar with the three colors I'm not familiar with it myself but apparently they have a snip Z300 which seems to cover men who come from the three colors area or plan I'm not sure what term to give it but again there are markers which are pretty good at defining this group one of them is an interesting Dys425 a null marker now a null marker means they couldn't read it but you will find that the men in this group have a 0 for Dys425 that's unusual so it's another indicator of Z300 as long as you have the other markers as well so you can use your markers this is my point don't throw those markers out they are still very valuable for identifying snips that you could be positive for so that's the three colors from that particular snip the other one is the Eli Carle group a fourth century plan and again I went to the project there are projects for everything though so the project listed the surnames there and the snip is the Z16281 snip and others below I mean there's constant research going on on this of course and the particular markers there Dys390 equal to 25 and Dys492 equal to 11 so they use the markers as well to predict whether you'd be positive for the Z16281 snip now the other example I have is under the FGC11134 and it's an important branch down here CTS0466 is an important branch in the south of Ireland it's been researched very heavily by you know plans like McCarthy O'Malley Heath they're all the southern South Irish was the name we called them before we had the snip so CTS0466 branches out again and we have groups with say three men who were A541 and so on across there and basically we stopped here L270 seems to refer to a Sullivan very consistently and now I haven't looked into this myself but Nitro McCarthy who doesn't all work in this area gave me this chart where he has gone forward and assigned these branches to the different surnames based on his own research so you can see we're getting more and more down to the level of surnames and maybe family lines in the future again he's relating also Nigel is working on relating those surnames to the ancient genealogies for the own up to plan and I certainly haven't delved into that but there will be a lot of information coming out on that fairly shortly because they have done the analysis now I've gone as come to the end of the year 13 I have a bit more afterwards but I want to just kind of summarize that part like big why analysis is helping us to show surname affiliations and separate them from others using snips but big why is also showing branches within groups of men sharing the same surname and citizen scientists academics and individuals are contributing an awful lot so it's a huge network of people putting in a group effort and as I said there are projects for everything you'll find monster projects you'll find a Galway project you'll find a Breathley project there will be geographical projects but you will find why have to move projects which relate perhaps to more one part of the country than another so go looking for projects find what projects will suit your needs the best don't just stick with your certainly a project join the why have to move project a why do you wrap up a project that's catering for your particular branch of the why have to move now as I said there's just a small part to this and it's dealing with I1 and I2 I1 and I2 are found in the project in small numbers 6 and 7% and just to have a look at I1 first in general in Europe I1 is basically associated with Scandinavia and the Germanic countries but in Ireland we're supposed to have 10% I1 now again probably associated with the Vikings I can't actually tell you whether we have that or not from the Ireland why DNA project we have people who are I1 alright and they have the M253 snip which is defining I1 but a huge number of them have not done any more snip testing they were predicted by family 3DNA to be M253 and they sat there so I don't know a few have gone on and you can see that some of them 23 are L22 and 39 Z58 and a small number Z63 well this would be the Nordic branch these would be more the Germanic branches but I can't really tell you any more than that because we don't have the data I would defer very strongly to the I1 Habra Group projects and the other Habra Group projects which deal with the specific branches so if you're I1 go looking for those particular Habra Groups to help you learn more so I2 breaks up here in the project to I2 A1 and I2 A2 and I'll show you max first their frequency in Europe this is I2 A1 and the darker colours show you the highest concentrations but you see here in Ireland we have I think it's a 5-10% show on this map this is from Epedia and we can't really get this kind of data from the project because we don't have data from say the west of Ireland we don't have enough men we need a project there in Mayo that will analyse the data for Mayo and tell us what is going on there so this is why geographic projects or even the why happy group project is useful to tell us what's going on now the other branch of I2 in Ireland is the I2 A2 and here you see a nice dark patch meaning there's over 10% here in the north which seems to you know be paralleled in Scotland now again in the Ireland YGNA project we can look at the data we have for what it's worth we have an awful lot of people 125 who were predicted to be P37 which is I2 A1 we have 204 people who are predicted to be N223 and so on but this is the faculty 3DNA prediction I think they would not have gone on to do any more SNP testing but some people have some people have gone on and gone down further and in fact N161 is supposed to be the SNP that occurs in the west of Ireland according to Eupelia because I don't have the data but it would be nice to have the data so any men from Mayo please do testing I believe I think Gerard who told me today that Enda Kenney our previous T-Shop was what did you say it was NP37 I2A1 but a genographic tests 100 people in Mayo and they publish the paper on it okay sorry so you know it's a Mayo paper anyway so the Mayo results give us a possibility there of I2A1 in present there now as I said I2A2 is the other one which again according to Eupelia is more the northeast of Ireland and it would be nice to see a follow-up John on that to see if that is the case and again you can go down these are not the last branches these can all be broken up into smaller branches and if we are a broad project we can't do it but there is an I2 project which will do that and other projects as well so there's plenty out there you know plenty of projects to join depending on your particular YDNA so we can't find an ancestors location so we are an umbrella group we are a catch-all group we take anybody any male who's got Irish YDNA regardless of surname we're not really worried about what your surname is because surnames change people when they emigrate their surnames become changed you have the instance where your surname changes so we're not worried about surname it's just if you have an Irish male line or if you match Irish males closely at 67 markers that's fine and we look beyond surnames and accept all surnames and why have the groups personally I know other people don't advise I would advise to do 67 or even 111 markers join relevant projects do SNP PACs or the big Y now I haven't really mentioned how you do the SNPs if you weren't doing the big Y you can do individual SNPs they can be pricey because you're paying $39 each time but if you pick a relevant SNP PAC and project administrators will always help you select the right SNP PAC the SNP PAC includes what could be $40 I'm not sure but it has a huge number of SNPs and you'll be positive for some and negative for others but the general price for those is either $99 or $119 so you can see it's value for money because you then find out a lot more by paying that amount of money rather than spending $39 several times over so I think that's it very much Margaret questions for Margaret we have one here from John and Brian make your correction I think I mentioned it's very difficult we have addresses for all the members but even for me to go through all those addresses and find out which ones are in the US which ones are in Ireland which ones are in Australia it's too much like hard work even if you have their address I don't know if it's in Ireland or not some people give their earliest ancestor which does tell you where their earliest ancestor was born that's about as much as we could do really but it would be I'd love to have all those numbers how much interface do you have with the various Hapla Group projects and administrators well not a huge amount with the administrators but I would have more contact with the members of my project and I would then look at the results charts in the why Hapla Group projects and use their work and advise my member who's asking a question on that because I mean I have to draw from everywhere to give advice it's not all in our project you have to reach the why Hapla Groups like why full and ISOG and family tree DNAs why tree I should say and the why Hapla Groups are a fantastic resource and the main thing is they publish their results online I must say I'm throwing something here I hate when people hit their results private because you cannot share the valuable information then and if some projects are not allowing us to see any of their results we can't learn from that and share it with other people so I think sharing your results is very important absolutely one of the great things about the why DNA project is the fact that you're actually getting an overview of the entirety of Ireland whereas of course the Hapla Group project administrators are probably just looking at one particular branch of descent but do you have a because of this overview do you feel you're actually getting a better idea of what makes the Irish Irish that's a good question no but I keep asking the same question I'm trying to find out which one is really Irish which one happened in Europe but I think the more work we do on it with the big why and getting down to the starting levels I think that will feed us that kind of information about what's Irish and what isn't Irish but it is a difficult question and the last question for me is do you get a feel for the various migrations that might have come into Ireland because we know that there's been obviously a Celtic wave or so-called Celtic wave coming into Ireland and then after that there might have been a Viking influence as well but there might also have been smaller influences like Huguenot, Palatine, Jewish do you get a feel for what kind of contribution these different migrations might have made to the overall why DNA picture it's very difficult actually as I said with the Viking I can't answer that because we don't have a database which is focused on Ireland and something which tells us these people came to Ireland in the Viking times because they have the Viking why DNA we have people in America, in Australia who think their ancestors came from Ireland and we need more Irish men I think is the bottom line do we need that? Get out there and get testing every day okay well we have to call it a day there unfortunately but Margaret thank you for a wonderful presentation