Ms Aisling Moran:

I thank the Deputy for her questions. I will try to answer them as comprehensively as possible. We are hopeful on the UCC research. We are finalising working groups around the survey. The guideline is to have the survey completed by the start of the summer and UCC would begin to analyse the data thereafter. We hope to have it for the middle of the summer or towards the end. Our annual general meeting is in September so we will definitely have it for that. The data will be collected by the end of May because there is no point in doing research or data collection on islands in the summertime. We hope to have that done and UCC will collate and analyse the data and have the report soon after. We are in line with the timeline for the policy document also, which will be useful.

On sharing a draft, I believe, unless somebody corrects me, that we have not had an official response in writing but it was mentioned at the joint Oireachtas committee when officials from the Department were before it. I think it was said they would share a draft with us. Maybe somebody could clarify that. We keep asking because there has not been anything in writing but we have had good engagement with Department officials Bairbre Nic Aongusa and Bríd Ní Chonghaile on the policy document. Comhdháil has not met with the Minister on the policy document but we met with her officials in the summertime. Bríd Ní Chonghaile is always available and I think they are going to one more island now that things have opened up again.

BCPs are working quite well. We need acceleration. BCPs are fantastic. I do not have the exact number of hubs but perhaps one of my colleagues has. I do not want to give a figure that is not 100% correct. We need it going to houses to keep us in line with the mainland. Some of the buildings on islands are substandard when we look at the communal spaces, while some small islands do not have a communal space. There are challenges around that. We welcome the BCPs. It is great to have something but we need something more. People are looking for stuff to go to their houses, as well as having BCPs to come out and work at. That is the same all over the country and we are hopeful we get the same response on it.

That is as well as I can answer those questions. If any of my colleagues want to come in on any of those, by all means do.