Mr. Hugh Creegan:

Regarding active travel, we fund small projects. What we have asked local authorities to do - it is not a show-stopper - is to bundle projects together. For example, instead of one pedestrian crossing, three or four could be bundled together to reduce the paperwork involved. It is to reduce bureaucracy. We fund many little projects around the place but people may not see that because they are part of a bigger bundle in order to get them delivered.

The local area hackney was an initiative first introduced ten years ago but it has never taken off. There are various reasons it has not. Insurance has been an impediment. We are reviewing it at the moment and our intention is to develop an enhanced version, which we hope will be before the end of the year.

Pre 2009, many more taxi licenses were issued but were not necessarily operating. After that, the number was somewhere between 22,000 and 26,000 taxis overall. It went down before and during Covid but it is now on an upward trend. Last year, the greatest number of drivers entered the industry in the past 15 years. Regarding the figure from 15 years ago, those licenses were not being used or were what we call "inactive" but were included in the statistics. We are in a better place now overall.