Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): I welcome back Simon Richardson, Stuart Wightman and Marie-Louise Wise from the Department for Infrastructure.

Are members content that the session be recorded by Hansard?

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): I invite the officials to make a brief opening statement of up to 10 minutes.

Mr Simon Richardson (Department for Infrastructure): We have the slides up on the screen. I will run quickly through the background of and timeline for the consultation that we carried out earlier this year on the living with water plan for Derry/Londonderry. Marie-Louise will take us through some of the consultation responses. We will talk about the key themes that came back from those and the next steps.

I will begin by giving you a bit of background on how we got to where we are with the plan. Back in June 2021, we announced that we were going to develop a strategic drainage infrastructure plan for Derry, which was similar to the living with water plan for Belfast. We published the Belfast plan in November 2021. Over the following few years, we set up a number of stakeholder groups in order to engage with stakeholders and identify the pressures and issues around the plan area. In May 2023, we published 'A Vision for Living with Water in Derry/Londonderry', which set out the way forward. It allowed stakeholders to contribute to what they saw was the best way forward for developing the final plan.

Around the same time, or shortly after that, we were made aware of the cost of the Belfast plan having increased from about £1·4 billion to £2·1 billion. That was as a result of an increase of £700 million due to increased costs for Northern Ireland Water (NIW) elements of the Belfast plan. Because of that, we undertook an affordability review of the Belfast plan. The outcome of that review was published in October 2024, and the recommendation from that was that the Belfast plan and all of its schemes and identified interventions were still needed. Because of the increased cost, however, it could not be delivered within the 12-year plan that was originally scheduled. The structured programme for delivery over 12 years was stood down, and the Belfast plan is now being delivered at a scale and pace that is in accordance with the budgets that are available to the main stakeholders such as NI Water, which is responsible for a large proportion of that plan.

Around the same time, when we were developing the Derry plan, we had to take a decision whether to move forward with it or, as we were doing with the Belfast plan, deliver it in a different way. The delivery mechanism for the Derry plan is similar to what we are doing for the Belfast plan. We felt that it was important to continue the development of the strategic drainage needs in the geographical area. For that reason, we have progressed with that development, but we have concentrated on the nature-based interventions — the same sort of interventions that we talked about in the previous session and for the transformation fund.

We have continued to develop that plan, which went out to consultation in January 2025. Marie-Louise will pick up on that. We hope to have the plan finalised next month, in December 2025. We will, then, have a decision to make as to whether we publish that before or after Christmas. We hope to have the final version then. I will ask Marie-Louise to go through the next few slides, which will take us through the consultation results.

Mrs Marie-Louise Wise (Department for Infrastructure): You have been provided with a copy of the consultation report, and I hope that you have had an opportunity to read through that. I will give you a high-level summary of the consultation questions and responses and draw out some of the key themes.

The first slide shows a summary of the consultation process. There are two things that I want to draw out. Simon has already mentioned that consultation with stakeholders took place before the publication of the plan itself. We had a number of multi-stakeholder workshops, which took place in 2022 and 2023. Those workshops informed the issues and pressures and provided the basis of the proposals for the opportunity-based solutions that are outlined in the draft plan.

You will also note that 23 responses were received. I wanted to put that into context. When the draft living with water in Belfast plan was published — it represents a larger geographical area — it received 31 responses. We were content that the number of responses received was in line with our expectations. We were also satisfied that the responses were from the range of stakeholders that we would expect, including from local government, environmental bodies, political parties, representatives from the building and construction industries, and private individuals. A full list of respondents is available in appendix A to the consultation report.

Generally, the responses that we received that directly answered the questions in the consultation were positive. Consultees were able to respond via an online survey. The consultation template was structured to allow respondents to answer five questions directly, but there was also scope to provide additional narrative on their views. There were also two general questions seeking any further comments that, perhaps, respondents felt had not been sufficiently covered in their previous answers. Nine respondents, however, chose not to use the survey template at all and, instead, provided detailed response documents to outline their or their organisation's views. A detailed summary of every comment that was received is provided in the consultation report. The departmental response to those is there as well.

In the next few slides — slides 6, 7 and 8 — you will see the statistical analysis for questions 1, 2 and 3. I will not go into each of those in detail at the moment, but members are welcome to ask questions about them later. Those questions were designed to establish that stakeholders agreed with the need for the plan and with its overarching aims, which are to protect from flooding, enhance the environment and grow the economy. They also sought views on the development of blue-green infrastructure in the plan area, and on the proposed catchment-based approach. The majority of the responses were positive and indicate public support for the aims and principles of the plan and the proposed approach.

Slide 9 is a visual representation of the geographical scope of the plan. It is broken into the four catchments. Questions 4 and 5 asked respondents to provide individual answers against each of those geographical catchment areas, rather than just generally about the principles of the plan. An analysis of the responses to questions 4 and 5 is provided on the next two slides. Those two questions were designed to establish that the multi-stakeholder workshops that happened before we published the plan had been effective in drawing out the correct issues and pressures and the opportunity-based solutions. Respondents were provided with the opportunity to challenge those or add to them, based on their own knowledge and expertise. In the main, responses were positive. Where respondents disagreed, they were able to provide suggestions and recommendations in the comments section.

Slide 12 shows the key themes that we saw coming out of the responses when we did the analysis of the individual comments. Again, I will not go into each of those in detail right now, but I am happy to take questions on any of them. I will draw out a couple of them and explain the departmental response to them. The first point on slide 13 is policy and legislation. The theme is about Sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) and natural flood management, which we talked about earlier today. Although respondents were absolutely supportive of SuDS and natural flood management interventions — that is indicated in question 3 of the consultation — they urged the Department to address the policy and legislative gaps that exist and to support the implementation of those. As you heard this morning, we recognise those gaps. They are not specific to that geographical area. We are working on trying to bridge those with SuDS in new developments and through the transformation fund pilot project to retrofit SuDS and natural flood management (NFM). All of that work will inform future policy. We are alive to those concerns and recognise the importance of that work on the implementation of the plan.

Consultees sought clarity on the funding, governance and implementation of the plan, with some making the comparison between the delivery proposals that were outlined in the Belfast plan and how they differ from this plan. As Simon outlined in his introduction, we have had to learn lessons from the living with water in Belfast plan review. The proposals in the plan adopt the same delivery approach, so we remain consistent.

Slide 14 is next steps. A draft of the final plan has been provided to members. It incorporates any amendments that have been made following the consultation. The draft is still subject to ministerial approval. It is our intention to publish in December, although it may slip to January, as Simon said. Of course, we would welcome any further comments that members may have following today's session. Subject to ministerial approval of the plan, and following its publication, the appropriate governance structures will be established with our key delivery partners, and we will begin planning for implementation.

That was a quick run-through. I am happy to take any questions that you may have.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Thank you so much, Marie-Louise. That was very informative. I will kick off.

Simon, I am looking to clarify a few bits of the introduction around background and timeline, which was the first slide that you shared.

You mentioned the cost of the Belfast plan and gave two figures: £1·4 billion and £2·1 billion over 12 years. Tell me again the context of those two figures.

Mr Richardson: When the Belfast plan was published in November 2021, it had a 12-year delivery time frame and an estimated cost of £1·4 billion. That was made up of £1·2 billion of NI Water-related infrastructure upgrades and £200 million that was estimated for blue-green interventions that would be used in an integrated catchment-management approach, whereby they may integrate with the work that is needed by NI Water, particularly in its network. For instance, the networks in Belfast are in a poor condition, as are some of the waste water treatment works. Instead of having to dig up every road in Belfast and put in a bigger pipe, we wanted to look at whether there were blue-green interventions that could, as we talked about this morning, deal with rainwater on the surface; reduce the amount of water going into the pipes, or slow it down; and reduce the number of pipes that need to be upgraded. That is the living with water programme principle: how we use all of the tools in the toolbox to come forward with the best solution. I am not saying that that would happen in every case. There are many cases in which the road will have to be dug up and new pipes laid.

The figure was £1·4 billion, of which £1·2 billion related to NI Water. In May or June 2023, NI Water indicated that the £1·2 billion figure that it had as the cost its upgrades had risen to £1·9 billion. That is an increase of over 50%. The senior responsible officer (SRO) for the programme agreed with the living with water programme board that we would do an affordability review to find what the impact of that increase would be. To cut a long story short, it was found, given the estimated available budgets going forward, that it could not be delivered within the 12-year time frame. We had significant governance structures in place to take through all of the work, including the NI Water work, and NI Water had a lot of staff and governance arrangements in place to take it forward. A number of the big schemes were coming to a point at which the business plan had to be approved. The funding stream had to be available to enable the business case to be signed off. It was not. Therefore, the four big treatment works in Belfast that were going to be upgraded could not be signed off from a business case point of view. The outcome of the review was that all of the work still needed to be done, but that it could not be done in the time frame in which we thought that it could and, therefore, that it will have to be taken forward on a scale and at a pace as NI Water gets its money through price control (PC) 21 or PC28.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): OK. The review that you mention was in October 2024, when the funding requirements' uplift was identified.

Mr Richardson: No, the increase in estimated costs came in the middle of 2023. October 2024 was when the Minister made the decision to pause the governance structures around the living with water programme but that the living with water approach should continue.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): OK. That is useful. I probably do not need to ask this question. I am sure that you accept that there are significant requirements regarding Northern Ireland Water funding, in general terms, across Northern Ireland. We have certainly heard that — we heard it from Northern Ireland Water — and I think that it is fairly well accepted by the Minister and the Committee that an amount of money is needed to solve the problem. That was all happening as we headed towards January 2025 and the opening of the living with water in Derry/Londonderry plan consultation. The facts are that there are significant funding pressures; that since the publication of the Belfast plan in November 2021, rising costs were identified in 2023; that the Belfast living with water plan was revised in October 2024; and that departmental officials and the Minister had accepted that even the Belfast plan was not deliverable within a 12-year period. Am I right so far?

Mr Richardson: Yes.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): OK. They said that that period would have to be extended. You can rephrase it however you want, but you are cutting your cloth to suit what you have. Given that knowledge and the clear identification that there was by that stage of how much it would cost to do just the Belfast plan, I am a little confused as to why a consultation was announced for Derry/Londonderry in January 2025. Do you see where I am going with that?

Mr Richardson: I absolutely do; I understand that. People have asked me directly why we are going out with a Derry/Londonderry plan when we cannot deliver the Belfast plan. That is exactly right: we cannot deliver the Belfast plan in the way that we envisaged delivering it. The Belfast plan started in 2014 — Stuart was in post at that time, but I was not — after there had been a number of flooding incidents. The Executive requested a strategic drainage plan for Belfast at that time: that is what the Belfast plan grew out of. It is a huge plan. Integration and the living with water and nature-based approaches became more prevalent as part of that plan. All the hard-engineered upgrades are still needed in Belfast; there is no question about that.

If we had done a similar plan for Derry/Londonderry, putting in all the NI Water costs, and it had come out at, for example, £1 billion, where would that have taken us? Through the stakeholder groups that Marie-Louise talked about, we had done a lot of work in that area to identify the pressures and issues. There are problems in Derry as well as in Belfast. We had identified all those pressures and issues and, in many cases, identified opportunities to deliver nature-based solutions. I will give you one example of that from our Department. We worked closely with the designers of the A2 Buncrana Road upgrade on the drainage element. There were significant drainage problems, but that was prime development land, so, by putting detention or attenuation ponds — whatever we call them — along the side of the A2, we would have been taking prime development land away and putting in ponds. We went back up the catchment, however, and put a pond in an area of green space that was not being used and that was, in fact, owned by the Housing Executive. We did a lot of work with the Housing Executive whereby we were able to put in a blue-green integrated solution that would help to facilitate the construction of the road and maximise the number of houses that could be built. We have a number of examples, from across the geographical scope, of where we have identified and undertaken opportunities that, for me, it would have been a real shame had we not taken forward and just set to one side.

As it sits, the Derry plan raises awareness of the issues in the area and raises stakeholders' awareness of the potential of blue-green interventions and speaks to all the stakeholders to say, "What are you doing in the near future? What schemes do you have coming? How can we integrate blue-green interventions into those schemes?". I do not have a figure that I can give you. I cannot say, for example, "Right, we need £1 billion to take forward the Derry plan". However, I see the Derry plan as being an important vehicle for continuing the debate and discussion on, and delivery of, nature-based solutions.

I do not consider it to be unfortunate that it has the same name. It is being linked to Belfast, but this is a different type of vehicle from the Belfast plan. We have moved this plan to a position of trying to get other stakeholders to bring forward blue-green interventions as business as usual and to integrate them. That is what I see as the real positive of this plan. For many long days after this, I will have to defend why we went forward with this plan in January 2025, given that progress on the Belfast plan is where it is, but that is my answer. I feel strongly that it was worth publishing this document, given the work that we had already done, and I think that the benefit that it could have for the area in allowing us to integrate —.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): I have a couple of follow-up questions. Derry City and Strabane District Council's (DCSDC) response to the consultation document states:

There is a fair level of commitment from the Department to the Derry/Londonderry living with water plan. How far along are you with regard to the quantum of what the plan will actually cost?

Mr Richardson: We do not have a figure for that at all, because it will depend. For some interventions, we will look at them and sit down with the partners who will be the key leads. The main partner in this will be Derry City and Strabane District Council. The council may be doing an infrastructure project in a park or whatever, and we would work with it. The council will have drainage needs that it has to meet. We would look at whether we can work with the council to bring in blue-green interventions rather than hard-engineered ones. There is no quantum whereby I can say, "I need £x million to deliver this plan". The plan really can be as big or as small as we and the stakeholders make it. It is about trying to give stakeholders, developers and the other people who are involved an opportunity to look at different ways of doing things, and maybe easier ways of doing things. I see that collaboration aspect as being the real benefit and positive of it. As I have said, the living with water programme in Belfast has stopped; the living with water approach is still relevant and should not be thrown out with the bathwater.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): OK. That was a good analogy to end that answer with, Simon.

I have one more question. I outlined the context in my first question. The Minister, the Committee and probably the Executive, for that matter, understand the pressures around budgets in general. The Committee is more than aware of the pressures around budgets within the Department for Infrastructure and as regards what the Minister wants to try and achieve. We are saying that the cost of the Belfast plan has risen significantly and that that plan cannot be delivered in 12 years. I have not asked yet, but you might want to include in your answer when the Belfast plan actually will be delivered — what the timescale is. Given all that, is there not a danger that, in proceeding with the publication of this in December 2025, you are raising expectations? I will just say it: the backdrop is your not even having the money to deliver your Belfast plan — a plan where the price has risen substantially. If there was a decision by the Department to proceed with the living with water in Derry/Londonderry plan, would you raise expectations without having the money to back it up? I accept that councils do not have that kind of capital firepower, and I do not doubt the usefulness of the plan, the work that has gone into it and the fact that it is required. However, I still bring us all back to the pure economics, in that you can only spend what you have. Is there not a danger that, in proceeding with this, you are raising expectation when it simply is not deliverable?

Mr Richardson: Potentially, yes. Managing expectations will be a difficult job for us. It is about what we do with the work that we have done in this area in looking at all of the pressures and issues and in all the interactions with people. We had all that potential. What do we do with that? Do we just say, "OK, the Belfast plan has slowed down so we will not do this one"? That was an option. We are so close to having the plan published. There is lot of good work in there that has been identified and has the potential to be picked up by other stakeholders. It is about finding a balance. Do we just give up on what we have done, or do we finish it off and try to push forward? I absolutely have a job to do in managing expectations. Given the name on the tin, whereby we have the living with water in Belfast plan and the living with water in Derry/Londonderry plan, they are the same thing, but they are not the same thing now. I accept that totally. Do we throw the baby out with the bathwater, or do we plough on and try to do the right thing? The living with water approach is the right approach. The only thing that is being dropped is the programme element. Going back to your question about whether I have a time frame for the Belfast plan, unfortunately I do not.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Could you get that to us?

Mr Richardson: No. There is no timeline for the Belfast plan, because we do not know what funding will be available over the next 12 to 18 years. The price control periods are six years, although this one has been extended by a year. Without knowing the funding that will be available over a period —. It is not that I do not have it with me; it is that it is not there. There is no time frame.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): That is fine. Thank you so much for those answers. I took a wee bit of time, and I apologise.

Mr Stewart: Thanks again for your evidence. The Chair has probably covered most of the pertinent issues. I totally take your point, Simon, that the project is a strong principle that the Department and NI Water are in favour of, but there are competing priorities. While I accept that the principle includes developers and councils maybe being able to get on with certain parts of it, there are key aspects that will still require NI Water to do work and find the capital funding to implement it. Is there a danger — maybe there is not — that we will have, competing with each other, two pretty significant NI Water capital projects that have the same "living with water" titles but are different and will have different outcomes? How will that be managed?

Mrs Wise: Any schemes that NI Water brings forward will be part of the PC process anyway and prioritised on that basis, so I do not see them as being in competition. They will be projects that NI Water needs to deliver. Whether the schemes are in Belfast, Derry or anywhere else in Northern Ireland, that is how NI Water will prioritise them.

Mr Stewart: There is a finite amount of money. I totally accept that they will not be in competition, but the Belfast project is currently on hold. A significant sum has been spent to date. We do not know when it will come off hold. If money becomes available, will it be spent there or will it get split up? How will we maximise the limited finance available to ensure that the projects are delivered?

Mr Richardson: The only capital plan for NI Water is the price control plan. That is what it will work on. If we go back a number of years to when the living with water programme and Belfast plan were being developed, there was, given the scale, always an expectation that we would need more money just to do that. That money did not come. There are no two competing capital programme s as far as NI Water is concerned. Its PC21 is what it will deliver.

If NI Water has in its PC21 or PC28 programme a scheme in Derry/Londonderry — the scheme could be to do with the Culmore waste water treatment works or some of the networks there — we will want, under the living with water in Derry plan, to sit down with NI Water and ask, "What are you doing over the next four or five years? Network improvements? Are there any blue-green schemes that could do storm separation to allow you to reduce the level of network improvement that you need?". That is the interaction that I see coming from that plan. The only capital plan for NI Water is its price control.

Mr Stuart Wightman (Department for Infrastructure): Simon alluded to this earlier in response to the Chair's question. Going back to the early days of the Belfast plan, we found out very early that, in and around east Belfast and Glentoran's stadium, eight organisations were spending over £100 million but not talking to each other. There was the Housing Executive, the Oval stadium and an electricity station that had to be moved. The beauty of this project is that it is a coordination of plans. Everybody is working to very tight budgets that they have to spend quickly. Having everything out in the open, where people can see what other organisations are planning, is a big part of it.

Mr Stewart: Nobody is taking away from how successful it is and its potential. We are just very conscious of the difficult financial pressures that we are under. The project in Belfast started, but it has now stopped. I do not know the financial impact of that. Maybe you have done a cost analysis of starting the project and it now being on hold, and to estimate the cost of reigniting the Belfast project. Is there anything on that?

Mr Richardson: I do not have that figure, but, the longer it takes to do something, the more it will cost; everybody knows that. That is where we are. We stopped the Belfast plan at the point of business cases being worked on, in which Stuart was heavily involved with NI Water. If money became available, the business cases could be picked up and taken forward. Hopefully, we have paused at the optimum position to allow those to be picked up again and taken forward.

Mr Stewart: OK. Marie-Louise, maybe you can come in on this one regarding the consultation responses. I notice that, compared to some consultations, there was quite a high number of what seem to be people neither agreeing nor disagreeing — people who had gone to the effort of filling out a consultation form but then did not have any opinion on it. Does that seem a little bit unusual? Could you find any reason for that?

Mrs Wise: Are you specifically talking about questions 4 and 5?

Mr Stewart: Yes: 41%, 41%, 29% and 47% did not have an opinion either way.

Mrs Wise: Some of the consultees felt that they did not have enough knowledge of the four geographical areas to comment on those specifically, so they chose to give general comments instead. We noticed that ourselves. Those figures are quite high, but that was the reason given in the commentary.

Mr Stewart: OK. That is all from me. Thank you, Chair.

Mr Harvey: Thank you, Marie-Louise. I am looking at the whole Londonderry area, where you are never too far away from water. Does that make getting to where you need or want to be easier to achieve?

Mr Richardson: In drainage, the topography of the land is vital. We have Lough Foyle right in the middle of the area. The hydraulic mapping to predict the flow and all those sorts of things are really critical for us in designing a scheme and as regards what can happen. For instance, we talked about the work to facilitate the A2 Buncrana Road scheme. It was at O Naullian Crescent, which is upstream, and everything just fell into place. However, it only fell into place because one organisation knew what another organisation was doing and they were able to marry up. The potential in the Derry/Londonderry area is the same as in Belfast, because it is in a bowl surrounding a lough. It has a similar geographical layout. The potential and the difficulties are similar — not the same — for Derry as they are for Belfast. It is difficult to say whether a scheme would be easier to do in one location or another. It is very site-specific.

Mr Harvey: You mentioned the potential, but it can also bring difficulties. There can be complications as well.

Mr Richardson: Absolutely. We need to be careful that, in trying to solve one problem, we do not move the problem somewhere else or create a more difficult one. That is where our hydraulic mapping and modelling and all of that is important.

Mr Harvey: Thank you.

Mr McMurray: I will not take too long, because a lot of the points have been well and truly nailed. I am from the south-east. As regards the north-west programme, Mr Richardson said that the only thing that had been dropped was delivery. That is pretty stark. You talk about keeping the debate alive. I will pull up the response from NI Water on page 46, which states:

Really, the only debate that this will keep alive is the one about how we fund our waste water and our water. Do you agree?

Mr Richardson: Absolutely. The hard-engineered upgrades at NI Water need to deliver. Whether it is in Belfast, Derry or anywhere else in Northern Ireland, NI Water's plans will need to be funded through the price control. That is where we are; that is their one business plan. NI Water will decide what to prioritise. If there is a real need in Omagh, that has nothing to do with this plan or the Belfast plan. I do not see the Derry plan influencing NI Water to move its work away from south Down to Omagh or wherever. If NI Water is doing work in the Derry/Londonderry area, this plan will help us coordinate with NI Water what other interventions we can help with. Say this plan was not here — say we had taken a decision that we were going to throw out all the work that we had done and were not going to do the Derry plan — we would still be having a conversation today about the pressure on NI Water. This plan does not, in my view, put any additional requirement on NI Water to bring work to an area or to do certain pieces of work. NI Water will dictate, from its PC21 and PC28, what its priorities are. When NI Water decides that, I see this plan as trying to facilitate coordination of its work with what we are trying to do. There could be other coordinations between Derry City and Strabane District Council and us. NI Water may not be involved — the work may just be a surface water thing — although NI Water might get the benefit from it. I do not see this plan being in any way in conflict with work that is needed anywhere else, whether it is in south Down, Tyrone or wherever. I do not see there being conflict.

Mr McMurray: I am not concerned about conflict or what is going on in South Down; it is more that, as someone from the south-east, I share the frustrations of the people in the north-west.

Mr Boylan: Are you talking about Wicklow or Wexford when you mention the south-east? You are not from the south-east.

Mr McMurray: The south-east of Ulster maybe.

Mr Boylan: South Ulster. Absolutely. We will go with that.

Mr McMurray: It keeps alive the debate on the funding challenges here. It is the gift that keeps on giving or not being given — whatever the mixed metaphor is there.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): It is Christmas. There will be gifts given and received.

Mr McMurray: No, it is not. It is not even December yet.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): We are not in December yet, so I should not talk about Christmas. There are decorations going up in that hall over there.

I have not had an indication from any other member.

Mr Boylan: I have a quick point, Chair. All the questions have been asked. We made a comparison with Belfast. It is clearly identified now. That is a good mapping exercise. There is a good work plan there. We will always face funding challenges, but that has been a good exercise to set out where we are and where we need to go.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): I do not want officials, especially Marie-Louise, who has led on this, to think that it is not really worthwhile work. I was in a Department, and I know that an extraordinary amount of work goes into getting something to this stage. That is not the context of the Committee's questioning today; I want to be clear about that. However, our job is to ask questions about the wider strategic decisions and implications, given the financial context that we are in. I do not want anyone, having gone through two sessions with the Committee, to think that.

I thank Marie-Louise, Simon and Stuart for coming along today. It has been a really useful session, and I have learnt a lot. More detail will, I am sure, be sent to us.

I will hand over to the Committee Clerk to see whether there are any follow-up actions. Is there anything?

The Committee Clerk: There is nothing immediate, unless members have anything that they want to follow up.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): We are probably OK, because no members have indicated.

Folks, thanks for your time today. We appreciate it.