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It is important to make it clear that the moneys that we are talking about for the Dunfermline learning campus in last year’s budget were additional—they were brought into the budget to support that project. However, I recognise your point about the concerns of individual institutions about their maintenance backlog. As you are aware, Mr Greer, the SFC has been doing a piece of work on mapping the situation across the whole country. We are in no way unalive—if that is the right word—to the problem. That is reflected in the work that we have done around asset disposal, which you will be aware of, to support institutions that have buildings that they are not currently using or do not need in the long term to dispose of them and to retain the bulk of the moneys for the purpose of improving their estate. That work has already been taken forward.

In anticipation of the report from the SFC—which will come in a few months, I suspect—and in conjunction with the Scottish Futures Trust, we have been looking at whether there are any innovative funding models to support the process. I realise that that is not about day-to-day maintenance, which we touched on earlier, but we are very much alive to the fact that there will have to be a response to the report, and we are looking into it. I cannot sit here today and say that we have found innovative solutions, but that work is on-going.

Yes and no, because the sector asked us directly to do that. It will be for the SFC and the sector to discuss how the money will be utilised, but we expect that it will be used in the context of the teaching grant. Bear in mind that, if those places were not filled, they would have been subject to clawback and the money would have come out. The money is being effectively guaranteed for the sector.

I said earlier that the SFC is able to assist institutions up to a point. When we are talking about universities, two things are at play, and one of them has not been picked up on.

First of all, there is the financial aspect: if multiple institutions were asking for bail-outs—as you have termed it—the Government would not be in a position to do that. The second thing for universities is their Office for National Statistics classification. We would have to be very careful about how we assisted them—we will call it assistance—so that it did not jeopardise their ONS classification. A bit of care needs to be exercised there.

On your underlying point about whether there is a wider problem, and whether what has happened at Dundee—not that we know what the exact circumstances are—is something that has happened elsewhere, I strongly suspect that, when the news broke, chairs of courts in other institutions said to their vice-chancellors, “Can we get assurance from our finance directors that we have nothing like that lurking?” Inevitably, that will have happened. The SFC’s conversations with Universities Scotland about the situation are on-going. It is a good point, and we want to be satisfied that whatever has happened at Dundee is not symptomatic of a problem in the sector.

As you are aware, other universities have taken proactive steps when they have got themselves into difficulty, particularly in relation to an overexposure to international students. They have sometimes taken painful steps to act. That gives me a degree of reassurance that, by and large, the universities are on the case. We will wait to see what comes out about Dundee.

How one would interpret that would be subjective. I say to Mr Marra that the SFC would want to satisfy itself that the plan was robust and that it got the university to a sustainable position. The part about sustainability is about ensuring that it is a vibrant and viable concern going forward. There might be short-term pain, but it will still be a thriving university.

I will not speculate on the detail around this, but all that I can say to the member is that the SFC has a track record of engaging appropriately with institutions. We find ourselves in a unique situation with the University of Dundee. I cannot sit here today and say, “The SFC will do X or Y”—that is not for me to say—but I know that it will approach the issue from the point of view of supporting the university’s recovery to a sustainable position, and of not doing or overseeing anything that would jeopardise that.

I will have to go back and look at the form of words that was used, because I certainly did not interpret it in that way.

We, as a Government, are not in the business of seeing institutions fail, but they need to become sustainable. That is their purpose, and it is in everyone’s interest that they are sustainable. A lot of the work that we have been doing through the tripartite groups and behind the scenes, working with the SFC and with institutions, is to get them to that place where they are more sustainable.

I go back to the earlier point about their growing their commercial income. We want thriving institutions that deliver the appropriate skills and qualifications in as many localities as possible. That is what we are in the business of doing.

I hope that what I said a few moments ago to Mr Greer indicates that we are on the case with that. Equally, I will not sit here today and say that we will be able to step in and assist colleges that have urgent RAAC issues, because we are not in a position to do that.

I would not use the word “unacceptable”, but I might use the word “unwise”, given what we have seen at some institutions, where an overdependence on a particular market—in that case, west Africa—has created difficulties. Self-evidently it is not the wisest position for a university to find itself in.

As you know, we have been mapping the scale of the issue with RAAC across the Scottish public sector, and the Scottish Government is not in a position to provide funds to address the issue across the public sector. You will remember that the previous UK Government had, at one point, indicated that it would rise to the challenge and provide the funding, but the funding never came. As a Government, we are not in a position to assist, and not just in relation to colleges.

However, some colleges are providing those training opportunities direct to employers. Your point about the credits is fair. That flexibility was before my time; my predecessor introduced it. It was just that—a flexibility that allows the college to decide how best to use its funding. On reflection, I do not think that it was as well utilised as it might have been. That is why we are using the tripartite group—it is to engage with the colleges on the basis of asking, “What do you need in order to do the things that you want to do and that we require you to do?”, and that is an open conversation. I do not entirely agree that that reduces opportunities for students, because, in some cases, credits are not being used.

Colleges are deploying those in a way that they think is most beneficial to them. They already do that in the school-college partnership space. I absolutely accept that college funding is not what I would want it to be, but we are working closely with colleges to make best use of the available funding, and I reiterate that a number of colleges are getting on with this. I accept that the situation is not ideal, but we are working closely with colleges to make the best of this.

I will answer briefly. We have no assurance. We are waiting for the UK Government budget. There are concerning noises around that are making the university and college sectors nervous. We await the outcome of the budget process with some concern.