Mr. Peter Ray:

Covid has had a considerable impact on the ambulance service since day one. We all remember when that flight arrived from Bologna and the passengers on that flight were all contacted. I happened to be on duty at that time. From then, day one, there has been significant staffing resilience when it comes to Covid sick leave and all the associated matters. The same has applied to us as has applied to anyone else working in healthcare. The difficulty was that we did not have the back-up staffing resilience within the organisation to face the issue head-on. We redeployed staff to pop-up swab testing sites and vaccination teams. We were at the forefront and centre of that. The ambulance service traditionally has quite a gung-ho approach to atypical circumstances, as is true of all other emergency services. We took that approach without question, even though it had an impact on the delivery of traditional, day-to-day services. Covid has had an enormous impact overall. We do not know how long that will continue.