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The estimated completion costs for the vessels is unchanged since last estimate at £110.3m - £114.3m. The delivery of 801 is planned for the range April 2022 to June 2022 and the delivery of 802 is planned for December 2022 to February 2023.

Tim Hair, Turnaround Director of Ferguson Marine is preparing an update, for the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee, on the delivery timetable and budget for vessels 801 and 802. This will be submitted prior to parliamentary recess on the 25th March and will be the first of regular quarterly updates on progress as requested by the committee in their report on ferry procurement.

Information on teacher vacancies in North Ayrshire from 2016 to 2019 can be found at:

Information on Arran only is not available.

A survey was not undertaken in 2020 due to the expectation that all teaching resource will be required to support education recovery and as such vacancies are expected to be very few in number. Since the start of the pandemic over £300 million has been invested in support of education recovery. This has helped to recruit an additional 1,400 teachers and over 200 support staff.

Current teacher vacancy information is available from individual local authorities or at: .

Total gross revenue expenditure on education per school pupil in the North Ayrshire Local Authority is presented in the following table, at primary and secondary school level.

Figures for Arran are included in the North Ayrshire Local Authority total and are not available separately.

Health Boards are aware of the need to work within the nationally agreed prioritisation schedule to manage the administration of their vaccine supplies. This prioritisation will also include a limited number of non-clinical staff who are working in COVID-19 red pathways and/or as part of vaccinations teams. This includes ancillary staff, such as cleaners, porters, secretaries and receptionists, who may have social contact with patients but are not directly involved in patient care.

Some staff may also be prioritised ahead of others for the vaccine due to their age and/or underlying medical conditions.

We are seeking detail from HM Treasury on any consequential funding along with detail in relation to the planned tax and levy as a result of the UK Government’s recent announcement.

I will set out a sustainable path forward next month and I hope by that time we will know the details of the consequentials.

In terms of the order in which we exit lockdown, the Scottish Government has always made clear that education should be the priority. In line with the advice of the COVID-19 Advisory Group on Education and Children's Issues, the first phase of children and young people returning to schools went ahead as planned from 22 February.

We will need to monitor the impact of this change very carefully before taking any further decisions. The need to properly assess the impact of the new limited return means we do not envisage, at this stage, any further return to school before 15 March.

As we consider these issues, we are of course doing everything we can to ensure that schools are as safe as possible for children, and for school staff. The guidance on reducing risks in schools, developed in partnership with the Education Recovery Group, sets out a range of additional safety mitigations.

To help Local Authorities to implement these measures, we will be providing local authorities and schools with an additional £40 million, as part of a wider £100 million package to accelerate school recovery. The success of this limited return, and the prospect of getting more pupils back later in March, very much depends on all of us continuing to abide by the wider restrictions in place.

We are not in a position to state, at this stage, at what point all children and young people will be able to return to education settings, as this is dependent on our monitoring and assessment of the first phase of pupils returning to school, and the wider societal picture in the coming weeks.

The Scottish Government remains in daily contact with all NHS Boards, including NHS Ayrshire and Arran, to ensure they continue to have the appropriate resources, capacity and staffing in place to provide a robust response to the COVID-19 pandemic and other pressures.

The NHS Winter Preparedness Plan, published on 28 October 2020, set out our over-riding priority: to ensure that the NHS is not overwhelmed. To that end, we can re-purpose approximately 2,400 acute beds nationally as part of our contingency planning; we have already doubled ICU capacity since the start of the pandemic, and have the ability to extend it further, subject to staffing and supplies. Mutual aid arrangements are also in place between NHS Boards to ensure there is enough capacity to deal with peak levels of demand. In addition, we continue to utilise national assets such as the NHS Louisa Jordan and the Golden Jubilee National Hospital, as well as the independent sector for a range of services, including urgent cancer treatment.

A number of measures have also been put in place to support Health Boards experiencing increased staff absence during the pandemic, including providing a further £500,000 to ensure additional extra practical support for the health workforce; allowing returning health and social care professionals and students to join the service and the continued successful vaccination of frontline health workers. In terms of staff wellbeing, we are establishing a Health and Social Care Mental Health Network to enhance existing mental healthcare provision. As part of the Mental Health Network, we have already set up a National Wellbeing Hub (www.promis.scot) and National Wellbeing Helpline (0800 111 4191): the National Wellbeing Hub contains a broad range of advice and evidence-based digital resources to help staff cope with issues such as stress, anxiety and resilience, and improve sleep; and the National Wellbeing Helpline provides a 24/7 service to those who require psychological support and can offer advice, signposting and onward referral to local services, where required.

Reducing flood risk is a priority for this Government and we will continue to support authorities to deliver actions that protect our communities. To support flood protection measures, the Scottish Government provides £42 million each year to local authorities. In September 2020, the Programme for Government also committed an additional £150 million over the next five years to support flood risk management actions.

The Flood Risk Management (Scotland) Act 2009 encourages a co-odinated, plan-led approach to flood risk management, which runs in six year cycles. Actions to reduce flood risk in North Ayrshire within the 2016-22 flood risk management cycle are included in the Ayrshire Local Flood Risk Management Plan. These actions include three flood protection schemes, the Upper Garnock Flood Protection Scheme (FPS), Mill Burn (Millport) FPS and the estimated £27.5 million Millport Coastal FPS, all of which are being progressed by North Ayrshire Council. The Scottish Government provides grant funding to cover 80% of the schemes costs.

SEPA and local authorities are currently in the process of reviewing and updating the Strategies and Local Plans for the 2022-28 cycle and these will be published for consultation later this year.

The Scottish Government has emphasised to all Health Board Chief Executives the importance of ensuring individuals, who are clinically vulnerable or housebound and who are contacting them for an appointment, are offered alternatives options. Individuals who are unable to leave their own homes will receive their vaccination at home.

We have invested £25m to support digital inclusion, which to date has delivered over 63,000 devices and almost 12,000 connectivity packages. In total, over 70,000 individuals will benefit from this investment.

In addition, we have made a further £45m available to local authorities which can be used flexibly to further support digital inclusion where necessary, and to provide additional staff or to deliver wider family support measures to support remote learning.

Local authorities and schools know their learners and families best. As such, they are best placed to identify those leaners who are suffering from digital exclusion, drawing on their strengthened understanding of need as a result of engaging with families on digital inclusion work to date.