Mr. Robert Watt:

Regarding oversight, the new board has met twice since December. We have a meeting every second month or more often if needed. As we mentioned earlier, the teams meet every week on the different projects, and on some of the projects they could meet several times a week. There is a lot of activity happening below the teams and issues are escalated to Mr. Reid and me each week but formally then at the board structure. We will see how that evolves over time. We are not wedded to this particular format. We will see. If it works, we will continue; if we think we can improve it, we will make those tweaks.

I do not have a timeline for when the elective hospitals will be delivered and when they will be opened. It is now 2022, so I hope we will get to the stage where we are going out for detailed design and procurement mid-year. It normally takes two to three years after that to get the procurement in and to build. The facilities are not as big as some of the hospitals we have but they are large in terms of their footprint. I will come back to you if I may, Chairman, with a more concrete timeline on that as I do not have it to hand. It will be several years.

Regarding waiting lists, Mr. Reid and I touched on this very briefly today. We are constrained in providing all the detail because the plan is not finalised yet and it has not gone to the Government. It would not be appropriate for us to give all the details before the Taoiseach and Ministers have had an opportunity to consider it. It is a very important decision for the Government, and I hope it will have an opportunity this week to consider it and to debate it formally next week when it meets. The targets do involve significant reductions in waiting lists by the end of this year compared to where we are now, and a very long level of activity, but it will still involve large numbers of people waiting at the end of the year. I hope the number of long waiters will also be reduced. That is a key aspect of the plan as well. The challenge of the waiting lists will take a number of years to address. They are not going to be addressed in one year. In order for us to improve our performance and reduce the number of people waiting, we want to get to a target where people do not have to wait more than 12 weeks, three months, in the main. That is what we get to and it is a challenge to reduce the waiting time to a reasonable level.