Seòmar agus comataidhean

Yes—the question was about commercialisation benefits.

I come back to the comments about extreme weather and the impact on Scottish Water’s infrastructure. I am interested to know exactly what the impact has been. Given what we have seen in recent months, with intensifying extreme weather, have you identified any changing patterns?

Has storm Babet thrown up any thinking around whether particular regions of Scotland are more vulnerable than others and need to be prioritised for investment? What are we learning as a result of the extreme weather events that we are seeing? How is that affecting your investment strategy, and how is it putting pressure on the assets that you have?

My last question is on the legislative framework. Is there a need for any change in the legislation to enable you to adapt to the impacts of climate change?

On what you said about targeting the most important areas for monitoring, I presume that those are designated bathing areas. I accept that, and acknowledge that there is investment going into that, but many people now use bodies of fresh water—rivers and lochs—for wild swimming, so they need information about whether those bathing places are safe to go into.

I have constituents who went for a wild swim in the River Tay, and everybody in that party—I think there were around 10 people—became ill a couple of days afterwards. It is very hard for them to pinpoint exactly what the cause was, but it was probably related to bacterial infection that they believe came from a combined sewer overflow incident in Stanley, in Perthshire. Their call to me and others has been for us to give them the information about that.

We realise that investment in the assets is needed to ensure that we do not get pollution but, at the very least, people need to know whether there has been an incident and whether they are putting their lives at risk by going into the water. That means that the issue is bigger than just our bathing waters, because there are lots of lochs and rivers where people go for a dip.

Is 1,000 monitors enough?

That is useful to know.

You mentioned the restrictions for the bank on funding public bodies. Do you see that situation changing over time? I see it as an area of frustration. I was talking just yesterday to Fife College, which is going through a massive redevelopment of its campus, and there is a frustration that it is not able to invest in electric vehicle charging facilities or renewable energy in the way that it might do if it were set up as a different body.

There seems to be a lot of frustration in the public sector that there are investment opportunities right now, as infrastructure that is needed to tackle the climate emergency is being built, but the finance is not always there.

Is there something in particular about the way in which the ScotWind process has evolved that has helped in that regard? For example, the supply chain statements have been up front in the bids for ScotWind leases. Has that revealed or provided a bit more certainty about where the opportunities are? Has it helped to stimulate things?

It is good to get a flavour of those challenges. Is your blue-green infrastructure for managing surface water or pluvial and fluvial flooding events? Will your blue-green infrastructure be able to manage events such as storm Babet? Will you need to change your thinking on that?

Okay. I would like to move on, convener.

I am sorry to interrupt. It is good to get the detail on that, but I am thinking about what Alex Plant said about the other extreme, which is drought situations. It is clear that you are describing resilience and how plant is operating. What about drought and the bigger challenges around reservoir water levels and everything else?