Mr. Liam Woods:

We are undertaking some work post winter, as the director general has just mentioned. There was mention of weekend working and over the course of the winter we specifically funded access to diagnostics on the weekend to encourage or enable flow. We will learn from that. The National Treatment Purchase Fund will work with us now in acquiring diagnostics and it is something it started doing over the winter. It is happy to do that as part of supporting emergency flow. That is quite important for us, as the committee will understand.

In terms of process we need optimum discharges on a Friday, as hospitals with a high clearance rate on a Friday tend to get through the weekend in reasonably good shape. Difficulties arise when that does not happen. We are looking to learn from this winter with respect to flow and we are doing substantive work using both international and local expertise. That will inform where we go for the coming period and the approaching winter.