Ms Bairbre Nic Aongusa:

We have almost completed the bilateral discussions with the Departments. The work started in July 2019, but obviously the Covid pandemic intervened for a while. During that time, online engagements took place with island communities that we could not visit in person. I will ask my colleague, Ms Ní Chonghaile, to provide more detail on the meetings we had. We have had meetings with every Department apart from our own Department, the Department of Rural and Community Development, and the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media. Those meetings are scheduled for the coming weeks. We have almost completed our round of stakeholder engagement. What remains is for us to have a meeting of the interdepartmental committee and then to engage further with the Department where we can have concrete actions put into the action plans. As I said earlier, my hope is that can happen in the early months of next year and that we will have a draft policy ready for presentation to the Minister and the Government in the first half of 2022.