Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): First, apologies for keeping you waiting. Thank you for coming to the Committee meeting today. I welcome back Susan Anderson, director of finance; Declan McGeown, deputy secretary for water and departmental delivery; Colin Woods, deputy secretary for transport and road asset management; and Judith Andrews, acting deputy secretary for climate planning and public transport. Happy new year.

Thank you for the evidence that you have provided to the Committee. We have taken a look at it, as usual. I know that you have slides, but, if you do not mind, be as brief as you can. Colin, I am sorry for singling you out, but the Committee would like to ask you some questions about the traffic issues in Belfast, if you are willing to take those. We will keep that short and succinct.

Mr Colin Woods (Department for Infrastructure): Yes, that is fine.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): That will probably be at the end of the next session, because I know that you are staying for the session on the business plan. You might not be able to answer all the questions today, because we have you here for the budget and business plan, but it would be great if we could follow up on the situation. Sorry about that.

Without further ado, please provide a brief outline in five minutes, if you can. We are keen to get to members' questions.

Ms Susan Anderson (Department for Infrastructure): I will lead with a short presentation and keep it within five minutes.

I will start with the resource position and bring members up to date with the outcome of October monitoring. You will recall that we submitted bids of £52·1 million in October monitoring. The majority of that — £23 million — was for NI Water, and there was an amount for winter service and a further amount for essential maintenance and Translink. We received an allocation of £22·8 million, and we also identified some small internal allocations that we could use to meet some of our pressures.

Following the outcome, the Minister agreed to allocate £4·1 million to cover the £3 million for the winter service and a further £1 million that was the targeted intervention for gully emptying in preparation for winter readiness and that goes towards the winter service. He also allocated £4·2 million for essential road maintenance and £11·5 million to NI Water. Of the allocation that we received as part of the monitoring round outcome, over half went to NI Water, with a balance of £6·85 million going to Translink.

Moving on to the recently submitted January monitoring return, we submitted a resource bid of £2 million for Translink concessionary fares; the balance of £11 million of the NI Water amount that was not funded; and the Translink pressure, which was previously reported as part of the October round and had reduced to £4·4 million. A total of £17·4 million was reported as part of the January monitoring.

Moving on to capital, the Committee will recall that we submitted bids of £110·7 million, and that included our over-planning amount of £13·7 million. To recap, £30 million of that bid was for NI Water, £25 million was for structural maintenance and the balance for Translink, with £9·7 million for street lighting. We received just under £40 million — £39·6 million — as part of the outcome. Again, over half of that went to NI Water — £19·5 million — and that was targeted towards releasing waste water constraints, with around 2,300 properties being unlocked as a result of that targeted funding. Some £14·5 million went to structural maintenance and street lighting within the transport and road asset management (TRAM) group, and Translink received a general allocation of £5 million. Those are the outcomes of the October round.

I will move to the January monitoring. Again, we submitted quite strong bids. We had a number of inescapable amounts, for example, for the A5 advance works, as well as amounts for the remaining over-planning commitment, which we have worked down to £12 million, with £5 million for the transport hub and £3 million for Translink zero-emission buses. The remaining strong bids submitted were scalable, and we could spend anything up to those amounts on structural maintenance, NI Water and Translink, as set out in the presentation.

That is the in-year position. It may also be helpful for us to give an overview of the draft Budget 2025-26, which has been released for consultation. The resource outcome for the Department is a draft Budget allocation of £633·3 million, and that represents a 13% increase from our opening budget for the current financial year or a 7·7% increase if we look at the October monitoring position that we are currently working to. It is the largest resource budget proposed for DFI since its inception. However, it is about 8% or £83 million less than what we needed to deliver everything that was identified. When we last attended the Committee, we indicated everything that was put forward. Therefore, it will still require a degree of prioritisation. At this stage, to be clear, the Minister will not have taken any decisions on the draft Budget.

The draft capital budget outcome is £932·7 million, and £390 million of that is ring-fenced for projects that the Committee will be familiar with: the A5, city deals and the transport hub. There is a further ring-fenced amount for NI Water for reinvestment and reform initiative (RRI) borrowing, and that is just over £100 million. It represents a 14% increase from the opening position for this year, and it is the largest capital budget ever proposed for any NICS Department. As with the resource budget, no decisions have been taken.

Where do we go from here for 2025-26? We are progressing through our equality screenings, which are in the process of being finalised as we speak. The outcome of those screenings will determine whether we need to consult, and, if we do go to consultation, that will be brought to the Committee in line with the procedures. Following that, decisions on allocations will be made. Once the final Budget is agreed, the Minister will be invited to take decisions.

That was a quick run-through, as quickly as I could go. We are happy to take questions.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Super. Thank you so much; I appreciate that. The Committee is keen to understand, because it wants to ensure that the Department has what it needs to do everything, which is key, given the pressures.

The Department submitted resource bids for the January monitoring round of £17·4 million, of which the £2 million for concessionary fares was categorised as inescapable. What was the baseline resource allocation for concessionary fares for the financial year?

Ms Judith Andrews (Department for Infrastructure): I think that it was roughly £45 million. Apologies, I do not have the actual figures here.

Ms Anderson: We will have to come back to you on that. I only have the figure wrapped up in the overall Translink allocation. We will come back to you with the actual figure.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): OK. Given the fact that the bid for concessionary fares was categorised as inescapable, what factors are underlying the bid for that additional resource?

Ms Andrews: I know that you want to talk about the traffic congestion, but the pressures have come from the fact that we have had a shift. There has been a bigger uptake of concessionary fares by people who have them, which is linked to the traffic congestion. The other thing is that it is part of the win that is coming out of having the hub. People are choosing to use their concessionary fare, be it a 60+ SmartPass, the Senior SmartPass or Half Fare SmartPass for those who qualify to get 50% off. There is just a higher uptake. We think that part of it is linked to the hub, in that people are trying it out and visiting it, so there is an uptake in that way. Along with the messaging around the traffic congestion, people who might have used their cars have elected instead to take public transport, particularly for journeys into the city.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): OK. That is interesting, because one thing that the Committee was talking about was the fact that we are trying to figure out whether the messaging on traffic congestion has worked. That is interesting.

Are you confident that the Department will not be at risk of an overspend because of, as you put it, the increase of people who are opting to use their bus pass?

Ms Andrews: Not overspend. There is good management information about the usage. That has been used to project the year-end position. We may need to look at the impact that it will have on 2025-26.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): OK. There are two further high-priority bids: one for NI Water and one for Translink. How will the bids for NI Water and Translink be used? Are you aware of how they will be used?

Mr Declan McGeown (Department for Infrastructure): We have worked closely with Northern Ireland Water and Translink to see what they need for this financial year. In the case of Northern Ireland Water, it was closer to the £160 million mark for resource for this year. It is currently sitting at £149 million-ish. The £11 million bid is to try to close that gap. In the event that we do not get additional funding for Northern Ireland Water — the same is true for Translink — it will be a case of it having to cut its cloth, live within the amount that it has and make any savings that it can. In the case of Northern Ireland Water, it will have to live within that £149 million.

Ms Andrews: I will come in on the Translink piece. It is all about strengthening the financial viability of Translink. Since we were last at Committee for the meeting on the October monitoring round, with the award from the October monitoring round and ongoing efficiencies in Translink, its financial position has improved. It is indicatively looking much better. The £4·4 million is to bring it to a cash position of £30 million by year-end, which is required. That is all about its going concern status. The money, if it is received, will strengthen its financial viability and underline its going concern issue.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): What supporting evidence was contained in the Department's submission to the Finance Department to underpin the bid?

Ms Anderson: There is a template for submission. Every Department is required to complete the same template, which they submit to DOF, in relation to any bids that they put forward. The evidence that has been set out today would have been summarised and the bids prioritised accordingly as inescapable or high priority, depending on which bids were being put forward.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Will you undertake to include that supporting information to the Committee? It will help to provide us with a fuller picture of each bid for the future monitoring rounds, and, obviously, we will have our priorities too. The Department affects the real lives of constituents. I travel the roads to work every day, too. That information would help us to understand exactly what is contained underneath each of the bids that are submitted.

Ms Anderson: Yes, certainly.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): I move now to the Department's capital bids. What assurances can you give from a departmental point of view that you will be able to manage the capital allocation to avoid any overspend, if the bids are not met in full or if the Executive approval for reclassification is not given?

Ms Anderson: Our capital overplanning commitments are sitting at £12 million. We have been very clear that, when we will be making our allocations internally and to our arm's-length bodies (ALBs) and that commitment is not met, schemes will be required to be paused or slowed down and moved into next year, so that we live within our budget allocation.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): I hate that word "paused" in this context, because I almost have PTSD over some of the schemes that were paused around the city deals and that element of things. Do you have an idea or list of the schemes that could be paused if the commitments are not met?

Ms Anderson: Yes, within the Department, in the TRAM group, for example. An individual will look at areas there and say, "OK, we will pause those, because they have not issued out yet". Yes, we have those in the Department.

Mr Woods: A number of resurfacing schemes that we are planning to deliver between now and the end of the financial year are reliant on additional money. The works orders have not issued yet, so you do not issue them, or, in extreme circumstances, you slow the project down, as Susan said, which pushes the spend into the following financial year when we will have a fresh budget.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Are you looking at the possibility of key infrastructure projects being hurt as a result of that? Can you say, at this stage?

Mr Woods: It very much depends on what amount of money you are working with. In extremis, you stop what you need to stop so as not to overspend the budget. We are not expecting to be in a position where we are having to make large decisions of that nature. We need to wait to see the outcome of January monitoring.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): I move now to the Deputy Chairperson.

Mr Stewart: Thank you very much for coming along and for the answers that you have given so far.

We heard from the aggregate and minerals sector and the contractors who carry out the essential road maintenance and repairs. They were very concerned about the cliff edge that they face. You identified that the previous time you came here. I am keen to get an idea of where we are with the maintenance budget for this year and next year. Is there a bid to next year's Budget to try to change the threshold, so that repairs can be done quicker, when we are not hitting those depths that we are currently hitting, Colin?

Mr Woods: From a structural maintenance perspective, we have a standing bid. We could make a bid any day of the week for more money for structural maintenance, and we are always ready to do that. We have a programme of schemes across the network. We take the programmes off the list that we can afford to do, and we are always ready with more. That is part of how we work with the industry to try to give it a bit of foresight into what we are planning. When we get the money from a monitoring round, for example, we very quickly disperse it to the Roads divisions, and they get on with commissioning the works that they need to do. That is a process that we are very used to and which we can turn around very quickly as and when additional money becomes available.

Mr Stewart: Is the money that has been allocated for the current financial year for essential maintenance only? Or, have there been schemes identified that could be carried out before the end of the financial year but were not planned to be done before that monitoring round?

Mr Woods: We always have a longer list than the money available.

Mr Stewart: I appreciate that.

Mr Woods: We never have to go around and generate a scheme. We are in the process of putting works orders out for the money that is available. We do not yet have a budget for next year, but we know from some of the things that we have done, including the analyses that we have published over the years, that we are unlikely to have anything like the full amount that is needed to maintain the network. It would take something like £192 million in today's prices. This year, our opening baseline was around £90 million, and the Minister has been able to add to that in year, but that is well short of £192 million. I am not planning to need to spend £192 million on this next year. There will always be a longer list of things that could be done, if more money was available. Unfortunately, that is part of the challenge of managing the Budget and monitoring round processes.

Mr Stewart: It is another massive reason for bringing in multi-year Budgets to make it easier to plan.

Mr Woods: It would always help.

Mr Stewart: I am sure that we will all bang the drum about that one.

The Chair talked about the capital bids. There was information about the reduction in spend for city deals and PEACE PLUS plans. What was reduced? Do you have any concerns about that?

Mr Woods: There are no concerns. Those are large, long-term projects that move between financial years, and none is in construction yet. The big spend comes when you are spending the construction funds. We are still in the planning, procurement, preparation and design stages with smaller amounts of money and where relatively small changes in the timeline can push the spend between years.

Mr Stewart: We will not see any projects impacted on by that long term; it is just about moving money on a year.

Mr Woods: Yes.

Mr Stewart: My final question is about Translink. Again, the Chair dived into the resource funding of £4 million. Chair, will we touch on Belfast now or wait until the end?

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): It depends on your question.

Mr Stewart: It is about basic capacity. Grand Central station is fantastic, and Translink's advertising campaign shows that it is important to get as many people to use the buses and trains as is physically possible. At Christmas, where I live, even with the massive volume of traffic in Belfast, when we urged people to use the train, the three carriages were packed to the rafters. Will some of the money be used to increase capacity imminently, so that, when we encourage people to use the trains and buses, those will be going and will have space? Is some of the funding identified for that purpose, given the urge to get people to use public transport?

Ms Andrews: In some ways, it is, because it is a global picture. It has been a tough year financially for Translink because of the allocation. Translink has done a lot of good work on efficiencies but also with an eye on the service throughout the year. The funding, if it is successful, will put it in a better financial situation, and it will be able to look at service delivery. At this point, there are no big plans to up the service, but there will be a review. We have a public service agreement (PSA) with Translink, and we will review the whole performance. We do that on an ongoing basis, but, at year-end, there will be a full reflection on the year. It has been an unusual year with the opening of the hub and the shutting down of some services. There will definitely be a review and lessons learnt around all of that.

Mr Stewart: It is good to know that, and it is important from the PR point of view. We — the Department, Translink and us — are encouraging as many people as possible to use public transport, but there is nothing more demoralising, when you try to use it, than it not going or not being as comfortable as was advocated. Hopefully, it will be, soon.

That is all for now. Will we come back to Belfast?

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): We will come back to Belfast. We will probably leave the traffic issues to the end of the business plan item.

Mr Stewart: No problem. Thank you very much.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): The last time you came to the Committee, we had heard from the Mineral Products Association (MPA). Again, there was concern about the capital spend for road surfacing projects and what that will ultimately mean for that industry and our overall economy. Can you give any further hope to that industry, because pausing schemes is pretty bleak?

Mr Woods: We understand that that is not an optimal way to help contractors and suppliers to run businesses. We will not rush towards doing that unless we need to, unfortunately. The longer-term picture is that multi-year Budgets help with planning, and there are other things that the Department can do to help with planning. The Department will continue to work closely with the industry and understands the challenges that stopping and starting can cause. We are also mindful of the need to have a long-term supplier base that can supply the materials and works that we need, and we will do what we can to work with the industry on that.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Have you had recent engagement with the industry?

Mr Woods: The Department has had recent engagement. Personally, I have not seen them in a while, but my colleagues meet them regularly. We have a regular liaison group that continues to meet.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): When did the last meeting take place? From the industry's point of view, planning is key.

Mr Woods: I would need to check to be 100% sure, but I believe that it was early December.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): OK, thank you. May I just clarify this point? You talked about reinvestment and reform initiative borrowing in relation to NI Water, and I think that you mentioned a figure of £100 million. Is that right?

Ms Anderson: Yes. In the draft Budget for next year, a ring-fenced amount of £105·7 million is set aside for NI Water.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): OK. Do you know what that will be used for?

Ms Anderson: At the moment, it is ring-fenced for NI Water, and the Minister will determine whether he wants to ring-fence it further for anything specific. That is how it is set out in the draft Budget.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): OK. Members, are there any other questions?

Mr Dunne: This is a question for you, Colin, I suppose. Are we still in the position that we were with the limited road maintenance service? With this extra money — I know that you pointed towards multi-year budgets in the long term — when do you think that we can get out of the hole that is the limited service, which has an adverse impact on everybody right across the country?

Mr Woods: The short answer is that I do not have an immediate plan to remove limited service, unfortunately. The financial position that would support that will always be challenging to deliver in the context of all the other pressures that the Department has. We are spending something like £45 million this year on essential maintenance. There would need to be closer to £65 million resource to remove limited service, and that is a significant increase. It is a 50% increase, and that is hard to see. Obviously, the Minister will have to weigh that up along with all the other things that he will need to do.

This year, we and the Minister were able to allocate additional money towards essential maintenance in-year, and we were able to make good use of it. There is less opportunity to do that at this stage of the year, but you will have seen the money in the October monitoring that, for winter preparedness, went towards winter service and gully emptying. We are always looking to develop packages of work that can take any funding that is available so that it is not the case that, if we miss our opportunity at the start of the year, we cannot do anything all year; it will remain the case that we are ready to respond at monitoring rounds.

Mr Dunne: OK. Thanks.

Mr McReynolds: I have a couple of questions. I will rattle through them as quickly as I can, because I know that we are under time pressure. I will turn first, Judith, to a comment that you made. You said at the start that Translink's financial position has improved. I was thinking that I should ask why. You also said that it had been a tough year re the allocations. What has happened?

Ms Andrews: It has improved since the second quarter because of additional funding that came through in the October monitoring. Translink got an additional £6·85 million. We work closely with Translink. It constantly focuses on the costs of service delivery, so it has managed to generate a degree of efficiency as well, or costs that it maybe estimated would be higher have come in slightly lower. In the main, though, the contribution from the October monitoring has improved Translink's position between the second quarter and the third.

Mr McReynolds: Thank you. I noticed in one of the tables — I think that it is still there — that there is £0·5 million for climate action for Translink. What does that look like in real terms? Is it enough?

Ms Andrews: That is some additional moneys. Those are specifically for some earthworks and drainage resilience work. There is already quite a lot of spend. Climate action tends to be for the zero-emission buses or the hydrogen-fuelled buses. That is where most of that capital money goes. However, other Translink initiatives support the whole environment piece. That is just a small pressure in there for that particular type of work.

Mr McReynolds: OK. In October, £39·6 million was allocated or earmarked for Northern Ireland Water. I think that £19·6 million went directly to Northern Ireland Water. Was there a reallocation of £20 million or so, or did the full £39 million go towards addressing the major pressures on Northern Ireland Water for waste water?

Mr McGeown: Peter, Northern Ireland Water needed in or around another £39 million-odd. We gave it £19·5 million, and that was to be targeted towards improving connectivity in order to allow housing developments to take shape. That is what we ended up doing: giving it £19·5 million specifically for that.

Mr McReynolds: Did the Minister say that he had earmarked £39 million or so?

Mr McGeown: He put the resource and the capital together and talked about the figures that had been given to Northern Ireland Water.

Mr McReynolds: Were resource and capital given together, meaning that the full £39 million did not go towards the waste water? Am I right in saying that?

Mr McGeown: You could argue that, yes, insofar as the resource was used in staff and support and all the rest of it. However, there was a mixture of resource and capital in that announcement.

Mr McReynolds: Belfast Rapid Transit phase 2 (BRT2) has been mentioned. I think that there was a £5 million underspend, or whatever the phrase is, on that. Officials have been to the Committee previously and talked about that, and they said that a large amount of money is needed to deliver that project — I think that you, Colin, said that to me — and that the £5 million is in preparation for what could come. Are we still confident that BRT2 will go ahead?

Mr Woods: The Minister is actively considering how to get the best value from the resources that he has for BRT2. As you will recall, there is a significant shortfall between what the city deal has been able to allocate and what the scheme costs will be. From memory, I think that there is about £40 million in the city deal that can deliver some of the scheme. It is not enough to deliver the full £148 million, but the Minister is trying to decide what the best use is of that £40 million in the short term to allow progress to be made on the scheme and to get as much of the work as possible done. A lot of the cost of BRT is in the operational phase. You need additional Glider vehicles, drivers and support and ticketing infrastructure and so on when the full Glider service is operational. There are infrastructure improvements, bus priority measures and other types of work that we could do to prepare for that. You can get on with those before you have the full funding. I think that the Minister is trying to identify the most valuable mix of things that we would pick out of the whole programme and get on with in that context.

Mr McReynolds: The Committee received correspondence from the Minister about £20·7 million being allocated to active travel this year. As I mentioned to the Chair, from an East Belfast perspective, we have seen active travel projects that have taken a long time to happen because of the consultation process that needs to take place. A year or two later, we are still waiting for any cast-iron, tangible changes to take place following the spending of that money. We were told by the Minister that £20·7 million has been allocated for active travel this year. Are we going to spend £20·7 million this year on active travel, or is that just a lot of money that is going to be reallocated? It takes time to develop those things.

Mr Woods: You are absolutely right: it takes time. Like you, the conversations that we are having are very much focused on when we will be able to deliver some of the schemes that are in preparation. A couple of schemes in Belfast — Montgomery Road and Ravenhill Road in particular — are at the consultation stage, so it is unlikely that there will be delivery on the ground this year.

Some of the broader allocation for active travel is being spent through councils on the likes of upgrades to greenways and so on. I need to check what the spend profile looks like for the rest of the year, but it is not the case that the money will not be used. As with our major works and some of our maintenance, it can be pushed into the following year and picked up then. As I said, we are always ready to take a reallocation of money and make good use of it in-year. All that money will be well spent.

Mr McReynolds: I think that the consultation about the Montgomery Road scheme started in December 2023. Obviously, it is now January 2025. Is that £20 million earmarked for things that will potentially happen?

Mr Woods: The team will sit down to try to work out what the real-life plan is to spend and deliver, and allocate the money accordingly. I would need to check how that is broken down and then come back to you, if I could.

Mr Durkan: Thanks to the team for coming in. Some clarity has been given on some matters. The financial situation is that we are in the last quarter of the year. Reference was made to how we can run planned projects, or the payment for them, into the next year. John talked about the advantage that multi-year budgets will bring. Although they will bring the advantage of certainty, if you do not have the money, you do not have the money. If people in a household are paid weekly and are struggling to survive, it would definitely not get any easier if you moved them to a monthly pay cycle.

The point was made about Translink's improved financial situation, and I know that it got more money in the most recent monitoring round. You said that it constantly focuses on improving the cost of service delivery. Is DFI doing the same?

I know that there are wider issues with procurement, but what work is being done in the Department to improve efficiency? With things such as road maintenance, we are always in the position of needing more money. In every monitoring round, the Minister, whoever they may be, bids for more money for road maintenance.

I saw a crew out doing road markings last week. They do a good job, which is great —.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Sorry, Mark, please come quickly to your point.

Mr Durkan: I will.

However, there is a street 20 yds away that is in need of new road markings that are not being done. The same crew might be back there next month or in two months' time to do that. What is being done in the Department to drive down the cost and improve the efficiency of service delivery?

Mr Woods: I recognise the problem that you are describing. One of the unintended consequences of having a limited service policy with a higher intervention threshold is that you find more things not meeting that threshold, and that can lead to a patchy work programme like the one that you described. We are working on a new maintenance strategy that is designed in part to ensure that, when we intervene on the network, we do not walk past defects that are a short distance away. We are also working on being able to put in a better quality of repair, so we are changing the nature of the repair that we instruct for certain types of defect. Subject to the Minister's consideration, which will come in due course, we hope that that will be part of a new maintenance strategy that can set out all the ways in which we want to deliver a better quality of service and maximise efficiency with the money that we have available.

Mr Durkan: Yes. I was going to laud the sensibilities of an area-based approach to maintenance work.

I commend the efforts of your colleagues who were out in all sorts of conditions and at all hours last week as part of the winter service to try to ensure that our roads were clear. I am fairly sure that we have not seen the last of the bad weather, so do you still have enough of the money that has been allocated to the winter service in the bank? At what point in the financial year do you say, "We still have a couple of million sitting there from winter services, but we are out of the woods and out of the winter, so it can be used to do something else"?

Mr Woods: We have enough to deliver the winter service. The allocation that the Minister was able to make following October monitoring has given us the fully funded winter service programme that we needed.

On the matter of balancing that, the winter service runs through to the end of March. In fact, as you may remember, we were gritting in the middle of April last year, so the service can even run into the following financial year. A lot of the costs are the operational costs of the gritting action, including driver costs,

costs, vehicle maintenance costs and so on. We have our salt stockpile sitting at the start of the winter with a resilience amount in it so that, even in a severe winter, we have a sufficient stock of salt available. That issue will not, therefore, impact on us immediately. Part of our off-season work is replenishing our salt stocks ahead of the following winter, so, from a resilience perspective, we are happy that we will have what it takes to deliver the winter service throughout the rest of this season.

Mr Durkan: That is reassuring. I wonder whether there is any desire or plan to revise criteria or to revise the winter service programme similarly to the maintenance element itself to ensure that there is not that penny-wise, pound-foolish approach that all Departments have been criticised in the past for taking. Sometimes it gets to the stage where it would be easier to ask for gold dust than for grit. A lot of grit is being used on the road because of the numbers of vehicle movements, but, because it is so busy and so many vehicles are using the road, it may require less gritting. I do not know. Is there any plan to review policies there?

Mr Woods: We are carrying out a review of the winter service at the minute, looking ahead to next winter. This winter, our plans are set and are adequate for what we need to do. We are always conscious of the fact that there are financial pressures and a need for efficiency. We also have pressures from a driver perspective. There are 300 people on standby to deliver winter services every night of the year, including Christmas. That is complicated by things such as drivers' hours regulations. If someone works for us during the day, doing maintenance on the road network and using up their hours, they would not be available to drive the gritter that night, if that need were to come. We have to be preventative, essentially, ensuring that we protect people's driving ability through the hours that they are able to work. That pressure is not likely to go away at any time, so we are looking at the winter service ahead of next year to make sure that it is sustainable and resilient so that we can continue to provide the service to the public.

Mr Durkan: Is further recruitment a part of that plan, and how is the recruitment of staff going?

Mr Woods: Further recruitment is always part of our plan. Yes, we hope to recruit additional industrial workers this year, and part of that will be to allow us to deliver all our winter responsibilities.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Thank you. Can you provide the Committee with the review of the winter services at the first available opportunity?

Mr Woods: That will probably take us a few months to do, because it is a sizeable piece of work. Yes, we are happy to share that with the Committee.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Thank you. There is a road safety element and concern when you are looking at the road safety plan and things like that. John, you wanted to come in very briefly.

Mr Stewart: Yes. Apologies if this is not topical today, but, in the correspondence that we got from the Minister, he said that he was intending to carry out, or was hopeful of carrying out, a review of the Taxis Act (Northern Ireland) 2008 but that that was dependent on staffing and resource. I am interested in getting a flavour for the amount of much staffing and resource that would be required. Is that factored into next year's budgets? Mark mentioned staffing. Do we need more staff to do that work, or is the current staffing complement enough?

Ms Andrews: We have struggled somewhat to fill the policy posts in particular. The good news is that there has been quite a bit of movement on the deputy principal (DP) and staff officer lists in the Civil Service. We are optimistic that those posts will be filled fairly soon.

Mr Stewart: Thanks. Hopefully, they will.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): No other members have indicated that they have a question. Some information was given today that was not provided in the written submission to the Committee, so, if you do not mind providing that extra information today to the Committee so that we have quick access to that information for the Assembly Chamber and things, that would be great. There may be some further questions, and we will come back on those, if that is OK. I will say goodbye to Susan now. Thank you for your time today.