Mr. Tony O'Brien:

The problem is that if one looks at the average with outpatients or inpatient day cases, which we did for many years, it ignores or does not take account of the fact that there is a certain tipping point beyond which people seem to be left forever. Within that list, therefore, one will find some patients who will have been listed for more than four years for certain procedures. Some of them will have had those appointments elsewhere but others will genuinely have been waiting, orthopaedics being one example. The purpose of the list is to identify the longest waiters so we target resources at them and, as with the inpatient and day case, progressively eliminate long waits and ultimately bring down the longest acceptable wait.