Mr. Liam Woods:

Our public health doctors have understood what is happening within the system for some long time. Using it to project service delivery is quite normal. It was the basis of input into the maternity strategy, the cancer strategy and cardiac services. Clinical planning, along with demographic planning, is a key input to planning any service, and has contributed to the planning of a number of services that have successfully developed. In terms of the Deputy's point on trolleys, and the wider need to access scheduled care, the key input now is to use this kind of information as part of capacity-planning for the future.