Mr. Paul Reid:

I share the Deputy's concerns around what the public will receive and how it will receive it in the coming years in terms of care. I believe that during Covid the public got a better level of trust and confidence in the health system for a number of reasons. We operated as a more integrated health system than the public experienced many times in the past. All elements of the health system came together, including GPs, pharmacies, statutory hospitals, non-statutory hospitals, private hospitals, the Department and ourselves, working in a more coherent and collaborative manner. That is what the public expect and we need to keep it going. They will judge us on what their experience is. There is no immediate short-term fix but we have to focus on some of the priorities. Waiting lists are one of our priorities. What is probably not publicly understood is that we do over 3.4 million procedures per year; however, we have 800,000 or so on waiting lists. People are waiting far too long.

To give some reassurance, we took from September to December 2021 a joint approach chaired by Mr. Watt and I and our teams looking at all aspects of public health delivery, private capacity, NTPF, reporting, hospital groups and specialties. We asked what was the 80/20, which specialties we could hold straight on and how we could focus on the longest waiters. We will continue that process into the multi-annual waiting list. It is not a short-term fix; it is a multi-annual fix. When I took up my role and I am sure when Mr. Watt took up his role, it was not on the basis of solving this in a year or two or with consideration of the impacts of Covid. We are focusing on what the public expects of us.