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I appreciate that. However, we are two years into a five-year parliamentary session, and we are going not forwards but backwards. We are 100 teachers down on where we were. It is not sensible to assume that that work can be done in the final year of a parliamentary session—that we as a country can deliver 3,500 teachers. If there is no progress this year, we will be in a really difficult situation. It would therefore be good to hear the numbers.

I welcome the Deputy First Minister.

I want to ask some questions about Fornethy house; I know that you are very much aware of, and have taken an active interest in, that case. It relates to young girls who were sent from Glasgow, by Glasgow Corporation, to Fornethy house in Angus over a period of decades, many of whom seemed to suffer systemic and horrific abuse. I know that there is much more detail to come out on those issues.

You will be aware that the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee has written to you this week in relation to petition PE1933, which is entitled “Allow the Fornethy Survivors to access Scotland’s redress scheme”. The committee is clear, based on the evidence that it received, that the state had responsibility and acted to send those girls to Fornethy house. I would like to hear your reflections on the eligibility of those women survivors to access the redress scheme.

Thank you, Deputy First Minister. I think that that is a significant evolution, given the evidence that you have taken and the conversations that you had with the survivors, and it certainly moves on from the submission that you made to the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee on 8 September. The language that you have used is very sympathetic, and I recognise that you will want to consider the matter more fully in response to that committee’s letter.

Caroline Harris, who is one of the Fornethy survivors, has said:

“The council put us at risk by sending us there. We were sent there by the council. Why have they not acknowledged this?”

As you set out at the start of the meeting, it is partly about looking for acknowledgement and understanding that there is responsibility and that they were put in that situation.

Violet Wilson, who is also a survivor, has said:

“To a child, six weeks feels like a year.”

That goes against the idea of a short-term stay. Carol Whyte has said that, to the survivors, “abuse is abuse.” They are absolutely clear about what they suffered and that there should be an opportunity for them to access the scheme.

To your knowledge, have any Fornethy survivors specifically applied to and been processed and accepted through the scheme?

That is more than fair.

From your reflections, should Glasgow City Council, as the successor organisation, be acknowledging those women?

I do.

Thank you, Deputy First Minister.

They were, although I do not think that the answer was.

I am not sure that that was the nub of my question. Perhaps I did not phrase it appropriately. It was about dropping young people who have certain needs into what is a crisis. We can talk about the crisis and its causes, but what we have heard in our evidence so far is that this could be precisely the wrong moment to drop them into it and that there is a lot of risk that those children will get lost in a service that is, in essence, being designed to deal with acute care issues. Is there not a risk of those children being lost in that huge, on-going issue?

I was saying that we have heard evidence that there is risk. The question is really about resourcing and how resources are spread.

If I can, Mr Stewart—