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The Care Inspectorate has a restriction in place in Marine House Care Home in Forfar at present. This restriction is to limit admissions to no more than one older person every 14 days up to a maximum of 45 older people. This restriction came into effect on 28 August 2014 and is still in place.

Although it is uncommon for the Care Inspectorate to place such restrictions, it works closely with local authorities who may cease admissions to services with poor grades until quality improves. This is currently the case in Marine House Care Home as well as in other services across Scotland. The Care Inspectorate works closely with local authorities to keep them informed of its findings and with care services to ensure they can achieve sustainable improvements to their service. In some cases, services themselves may voluntarily stop or restrict admissions for a range of reasons such as refurbishment, staff recruitment issues or whilst they make improvements.

Current vessel deployment considerations mean that it is not possible to introduce a summer Lochboisdale to Mallaig ferry service at this stage, as this would impact on existing services elsewhere on the Clyde and Hebrides ferry services network. The winter pilot service will be evaluated over the full three year pilot period before decisions about the way forward are taken. The evaluation will take into account the severe weather disruptions experienced on the route.

Costs to operate a year round Lochboisdale to Mallaig ferry service have not therefore been considered.

I refer the member to the answer to question S4W-24070 on 28 January 2015. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.

Details of the number of Lochboisdale to Mallaig a) scheduled and b) cancelled sailings each month since November 2013 to date, and the reason for the cancellation are set out in the following table:

*Ship out of position

While hospitals have experienced pressures this winter, none has needed to declare a major incident because of the demands that it was facing. Boards have been keeping the Scottish Government informed daily about the pressures that they face and the actions that are being taken to address them. Additional support has been provided to the boards when required.

Official statistics on hospital activity and beds relating to the quarters ending December 2014 and March 2015 will be published in March 2015 and June 2015 respectively.

Scottish Mental Health First Aid courses are run by partners from across public services on behalf of NHS Health Scotland. The number of courses ran during 2012–13 and 2013–14 classed in each health board is as follows:

The total number of attendees for mental health first training in 2012-13 and 2013-14 is broken down as follows:

The number of Scottish mental health first aid courses that took place are as follows:

Since Scotland’s Mental Health First Aid was introduced, 484 people have undertaken the instructor training. There are currently 322 trainers on NHS Health Scotland’s database.

In the years of its operation, this valuable support has helped enable the construction of over 900 new croft houses and the improvement of a further 200 existing croft houses.

The Scottish Government has held informal discussions with a number of crofting stakeholders and these have informed the terms of a review of the croft house grant scheme launched on 7 January 2015. The Scottish Government’s proposals include a significant increase in the level of support to be offered.