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CalMac Ferries Limited have provided details that the repair to the Isle of Arran exhaust leak in April 2023 incurred a cost of £1,212.54.

This cost was included within their vessel maintenance budget.

The Scottish Government has statutory requirements in the UK Marine Strategy to develop and implement pathway action plans to reduce the risk of introduction and spread of invasive non-native species (INNS), and to improve monitoring and surveillance to detect new non-indigenous species (or INNS) introductions, particularly at high-risk locations. The Scottish Government provides significant funding to tackle INNS, for example this includes part funding the Scottish Invasive Species Initiative, which is an ambitious £3.24 million partnership project tackling invasive non-native species alongside rivers and water courses.

Scottish Ministers, NatureScot, the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency and Scottish Forestry have statutory powers to enforce the Wildlife and Countryside Act UK (1981), using the Wildlife and Natural Environment (Scotland) Act (2011), which make it a criminal offence to release, plant or cause a species to be outwith its native range. This applies across all aquatic environments.

In the unfortunate event of any employees facing redundancy, the Scottish Government will always offer and provide support through our initiative for responding to redundancy situations, Partnership Action for Continuing Employment, PACE.

Through providing skills development and employability support, PACE aims to minimise the time individuals affected by redundancy are out of work. In this instance Capricorn Energy have confirmed that they are providing bespoke support to all affected employees and will not be accessing the services provided by PACE.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-17176 on 9 May 2023. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

The latest census on employee owned businesses was undertaken in March 2022. At that time there were 146 Scottish-registered employee-owned businesses and worker co-operatives and 49 non-Scottish registered employee-owned businesses.

Co-Operative Development Scotland, funded through Scottish Enterprise, continues to work to raise awareness of the value of co-operative and employee ownership models and provides specialist advice and support to businesses making the transition to employee ownership.

As the Bank is a non-departmental public body, ministers meet with the Chair and senior officials on a regular basis. These meetings address the Bank’s progress against its strategic aims and how its investment activity across its three missions can support government priorities.

The First Minister met Chair Willie Watt and new CEO Al Denholm on 2 May This was an introductory meeting.

A full list of all ministerial engagements and when they have met the Bank can be found here: Ministerial engagements, travel and gifts - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Collaboration and engagement is a cornerstone of all transport activity and there is community engagement at all levels of transport decision making. My predecessors and I, and Transport Scotland officials have engaged and will continue to engage with communities in developing and implementing strategies and on specific projects, such as the Islands Connectivity Plan and Project Neptune, and will continue to do so in the future.

For example, Transport Scotland recently chaired an Uig Resilience meeting on my behalf on 27 March 2023.

Whilst local transport issues are the responsibility of local authorities, Transport Scotland, my predecessors and I, have engaged and will continue to engage constructively with local authorities where proposals or projects are considered to have a potential impact on transport assets and services owned and/or provided by Scottish Ministers.

The Scottish Government has no plans to establish an independent review of governance of its portfolio of strategic commercial assets.

The Scottish Government is working in partnership with Ferguson Marine Port Glasgow (Holdings) Ltd to review the Framework Document, which sets out governance arrangements between the parties.

Preparing for Sustainable Farming (PSF) provides funding to farmers to undertake soil testing and analysis. Preparing and implementing a nutrient management plan on the basis of results encourages balanced fertiliser use for all plant nutrients. In addition, the Scottish Government-funded Farm Advisory Service (FAS ) offers a significant amount of high quality advice and support on a range of topics, the vast majority of which is free to the user. This includes the Soil and Nutrient Network, which is considering how to protect and improve farm soils and make the best use of both organic and inorganic fertilisers, saving money, benefitting yields and improving farm efficiency and resilience.

The relevant statutory requirements for land managers fall under the Action Programme for Nitrate Vulnerable Zones (Scotland) Regulations 2008 and the Water Environment (Controlled Activities) (Scotland) Regulations 2011 (CAR) General Binding Rule 18 – Storage and application of fertilisers.

Objectives/ targets for improving the water environment in relation to phosphorus and nitrogen impacts are set through River Basin Management Planning.

SEPA is responsible for monitoring phosphorus and nitrogen in the water environment. RPID audits farms for compliance with Nitrate Vulnerable Zone (NVZ) requirements and there are penalties through the cross compliance scheme for non-compliance. SEPA enforces CAR through its priority catchment work and other regulatory activities and can serve fixed penalty notices on land managers for non-compliance or in severe cases take a case to the Procurator Fiscal for prosecution. There can potentially be cross compliance penalties for breaches of CAR GBRs as well.

The following table provides how many deposits have been held with SafeDeposits Scotland in each year for which data is available.