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The costs to repair the damage to the pontoons at Lochmaddy harbour are a matter for discussion between the harbour operator and CalMac Ferries Limited (CFL). No indicative costs are as yet known, however any such funding for repair will likely be an insurance matter for CFL.

CalMac Ferries Limited adhere to strict health and safety procedures including but not limited to maintenance of vessels and operational safety checks. Full details of these and other checks can be found on the operators website - https://www.calmac.co.uk/corporate/policy-documents

We take the protection of bats seriously. Defra recently published a study looking at the number of bat deaths attributable to wind turbines which has increased understanding of this issue. Currently Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) are working on joint agency guidance on the assessment of the impacts of bats from wind turbines. I understand this will be published by soon.

The Scottish Government's Technology Enabled Care, or TEC, Programme was set up in 2014 to significantly extend the number of people directly benefiting from technology enabled care and support in Scotland, which includes telehealth and telecare.

Funding from the TEC Programme drives activity within Health boards, Integration Authorities and other delivery partners who remain responsibly for promotion locally. A report of the first year of funding, covering 2015-16, shows that already close to 25,000 additional people have benefited from the Programme. This report will be published later in October.

The Scottish Government will also publish this month our National Action Plan for Technology Enabled Care, setting out a range of actions to further promote telehealth and telecare as part of service redesign.

The Scottish Government’s support for community broadband projects is delivered through Community Broadband Scotland (CBS). CBS currently has 14 projects underway and in build; and a further 49 projects either about to enter the procurement or consultation phase. CBS is working with these communities to refine their plans and, in some cases, to determine whether they still want to progress a community owned or managed project. If so, funding will be made available to help deliver that aspiration, where a sustainable business case exists.

The £42 million referred to in the Audit Scotland report has already been confirmed. It comprises a £21 million allocation from the UK Government, which has been matched by the Scottish Government.

The £20 million advance payment was made to enable the delivery of the substantial subsea backhaul deployment as part of the Highlands and Islands Digital Scotland contract. Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) liaised with the Scottish and UK Governments at that time to confirm that the payment was in line with relevant procurement and State Aid rules. The payment was held in a separate account by BT and the funds were drawn down following evidence of eligible expenditure. The interest earned on the funds, which totalled £606,000, was returned to HIE when the £20 million had been drawn down in full. These funds will be used to extend coverage across the region.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring superfast broadband access for 100 per cent of premises across Scotland by 2021.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring superfast broadband access for 100 per cent of premises across Scotland. Commercial investment will play a key role in delivering this target. We would anticipate that public sector funding will be focused primarily on extending superfast connectivity to rural areas, with commercial roll-out covering urban areas.

Precise investment priorities will be determined once an Open Market Review (OMR) has been completed and the findings analysed. It is not possible, at this stage, to specify a precise date; though we expect the OMR to begin in the coming months.

The Better Broadband Scheme is a UK Government initiative. Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) funds the scheme; sets the eligibility criteria for vouchers; and approves suppliers to be part of the voucher scheme. All financial transactions are undertaken by BDUK. The Scottish Government’s role is to process applications in Scotland, assess these against BDUK’s eligibility criteria, and issue voucher codes. The Scottish Government has not allocated any funding to the scheme and is not sighted on how much funding remains available. The UK Government has not allocated a specific amount of funding to Scotland.

To date, the Scottish Government has approved 169 voucher applications. These vouchers do not have a specific fixed value but are capped at £350. As financial transactions are undertaken by BDUK, we are unable to confirm the amounts ultimately awarded to each applicant.

The Scottish Government has deemed 40 applications ineligible as these did not meet the criteria set by BDUK. Detailed reasons are set out in the following table:

35 applications are currently pending a decision.