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On housing—the hot topic of the day, which I thank Alasdair Allan for bringing to our attention—the Government has a commitment to build 110,000 houses by 2030, 10 per cent of which will be rural and island housing, which is 11,000 houses. I want to ensure that we hold on to that figure of 11,000. We need to remove the 10 per cent requirement and just say, “We need 11,000 houses,” because, from talking to people, I understand that that number is not really sufficient. It would be great to look at the value added per house for an island community versus an urban area, in terms of all the things that we have been talking about with regard to depopulation, key workers and the whole-system effect on a community of ensuring that those houses exist. Do you have thoughts about ensuring that there is a commitment to building at least 11,000 houses by 2030?

I have a couple of supplementary questions. The first is about childcare, because that is connected to the workforce. Over the summer, I visited islands and I was at a meeting on the challenges around childcare at which there were critical public sector workers who had young children and who could not get back into the workforce. The challenge was that childcare piece. I am aware that the Scottish Government is working on childcare, but do you also take that issue on board in your thinking on the islands plan?

Great—thanks for that.

You mentioned the carbon-neutral islands initiative. I have met some of the project officers, who do incredible work. What they do is amazing. They really get down into the detail and are getting a lot of buy-in from the residents on the island. One thing that they raised with me was funding. There were two aspects. First, there was a bit of a time gap in which they did not know whether they were going to get the funding. I think that the funding was coming but, in some cases, there had to be a bit of bridging by the host organisations to fill that gap. It was fortunate that they had the resource to do that, but the point that was expressed to me was that that should not have to happen.

The other aspect is about having general long-term certainty. What is the long-term future of the carbon-neutral islands plan? People who are involved in the project raised with me the fact that not having certainty means that they cannot plan for their lives. They cannot even plan to have a family, because they do not know whether they are going to be in a job. That is challenging. I understand that funding for carbon-neutral islands lasts until 2026, and I do not know whether we can see beyond that. Obviously, the carbon issues are not going to go away. The communities in those pilots are just getting started, and there is quite a long way to go to fully understand what they need to do.

Actually, my question has been answered, convener.

That is good to hear. We would welcome hearing where you get to in that conversation. At some point, the Parliament needs to be involved in that. If there are amendments from members, there needs to be greater understanding, as you said, of their impacts. Maybe, at some point, there will be a moment when Parliament needs to get involved, so there will have to be education on and understanding of the impacts of amendments.

The next item on our agenda is to take evidence as part of our pre-budget scrutiny. Before we do so, I invite Marie McNair to make a declaration of interests.

Yes, that would be welcome.

Obviously, the new deal with local government is reflected in the fact that you are both here today. I think that you said that in your opening statement, minister. What are the key ways in which the new deal can support local authorities in addressing the workforce challenges? Again, I will start with Councillor Hagmann.

We need to move on.

We would welcome that detail being provided at another time.