Mr. Aidan O'Reilly:

To respond first to the question about grants, we simply do not want to have closing dates. If we hear about them, we talk things through with the local authority. We would have heard about them in the recent engagement. We also hear about them anecdotally or in political representations. We do not encourage or see the logic in having closing dates. Having gone down in the period up to 2013, we have been in a good position in the past few years where funding has been been on an upward trajectory.

The situation with the adaptation grant means that a local authority knows at the start of every year that it will at least get the same funding, if not increased funding, the next year. There is an opportunity to operate on rolling, open-all-the-time basis. That point arose during the recent engagements. A rolling approach as opposed to a deadline or closing date approach is what we want to see being used everywhere.