Mr. Kevin McCarthy:

In terms of vetting of contractors, I am not sure what form of vetting we can do other than checking that somebody is tax compliant, has ownership or control of the property and is in a position to provide the property he or she is offering. We will satisfy ourselves on those issues in terms of checks. We do not conduct further background checks on people beyond what they are required to provide as part of the contracting arrangement. I want to make that clear.

I accept very much what Deputy Catherine Murphy says about the community engagement piece, and the fact that we need to do more and be better at that. We are taking that seriously. I hear what the Deputy outlined in the different examples and instances she described. We will reflect on that because it is our objective to retain the trust of public representatives in what we are doing. We rely on the support of public representatives to try to challenge the damaging narrative that can be put out there and to challenge misinformation put out there by people with their own agendas. That is absolutely in our interests.

I might have mentioned earlier that there is a group under the auspices of the senior officials group looking at the overall approach to community engagement and communications with a view to strengthening what we are doing on that front. It is resource-intensive given the rate and scale at which we are going into properties. There are lots of sensitivities around the timing of information that can be safely released. We must respect the process when we are involved in negotiation.

There have been lots of instances where information has been out there about a property that we know nothing about because somebody somewhere is preparing something that they are going to offer to us. That may be the word on the street, but we would not have been approached at that point so we would not be in a position to provide that kind of information. There are lots of scenarios that come into play. It is the reality that we will not always be in control of the narrative, but we can certainly do more to try to support Members in terms of being able to control the narrative at a local level and provide good information to people who need it, in particular local community leaders on whom we also rely on to support what we are trying to do here.