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I wonder whether Matt Bailey can give us, when it comes to the flexibility that you have had of late in making changes, a feel for whether the Corran ferry is the people’s priority in that area.

ACSEF, prior to all that, was held on a pedestal. Was the learning from ACSEF brought into the discussions on the deal? Did that make life easier for you?

I wonder whether Owen O’Donnell wants to respond to the original questions about flexibilities.

I invite Paul Lawrence to respond.

Thank you. I will give Susan Aitken, as the only woman on the panel, the last word. I was really interested in what you said about the fact that private money has come in not only as a result of aspects of the city deal, but on the back of some of the other joined-up working that you are now doing. Would you like to expand on that?

Possibly, convener.

Good morning, panel. Speaking about governance, one of the witnesses last week said that none of this is particularly democratic. For Joe and Josephine Public out there, a lot of them do not know how all this works. How do you think that the governance works? How do you relate to the public what you are doing? How are you scrutinised to the degree that you should be? Let us start off with Susan Aitken, please.

I get all that—there are eight local authority leaders in a cabinet situation, reporting back to council, probably without much questioning. In my opinion, the general public are not riveted to live-stream broadcasts of council meetings or, for that matter, meetings of this committee, convener.

What I am trying to get to is this: are they the people’s priorities that you have promoted or are they the priorities of politicians? Where is the democracy here?

Were the priorities the people’s priorities?

What about private money?