Seòmar agus comataidhean

We move on to the topic of seawilding, which Ariane Burgess will kick off.

I am sorry, but I forgot that Danny Renton had indicated that he wanted to speak on this topic.

That brings us to the end of the session. Once again, I thank all the witnesses for setting aside time in their diaries, given the delay last week. That is very much appreciated, as is your very useful evidence.

I suspend the meeting briefly to allow a changeover of witnesses.

Danny, I do not know whether you can hear us. We will move on to another witness and see whether we can get your connection to be a little bit more stable.

If Jenni Minto does not mind, I am going to butt in here, as I am also a bit of a hedge fan.

We are not getting an answer straight away.

Is the committee content to delegate authority to me to sign off a letter to the Scottish Government to inform it of our decision?

Members indicated agreement.

You talked about farmers and crofters coming together for knowledge transfer. On the back of the foot-and-mouth outbreak, sector groups were set up, particularly in Dumfries and Galloway and the south of Scotland. Dairy farmers and beef farmers came together with some strange and wonderful names such as the cowboys or whatever. As far as I am aware, they were hugely successful. They were facilitated by consultants, and it was very much an open-book process in which farmers would sit around the kitchen table and discuss quite openly the challenges that they were facing. Unfortunately, the funding for the facilitators fell away and some of the groups fell by the wayside. Is that the sort of initiative that you would like to see? Do we need funding for facilitators to pull together groups of farmers from particular sectors?

Thank you. That has certainly resulted in a flurry of hands being raised for supplementaries. We will start with Jim Fairlie, followed by Rachael Hamilton.

Nobody is bidding to answer that.

Okay. It seems that we have lost everybody now. I suspend the meeting.