Mr. Robert Watt:

I do not know if the committee wants me to go into too much detail. There are 228 deliverables and 200 of them are on track or are progressed on the basis of the report and 28 deliverables are progressing with significant challenges. We have spoken about some of them, such as waiting lists, removing private care from public hospitals, and Sláintecare in the context of what the Acting Chairman asked about. The areas where there has been significant improvement is the increase in public capacity; the number of beds; the number of people that work in the public system; the streamlining of care pathways that has been talked about and I mentioned the waiting lists. Another critical area is the recruitment for the enhanced community care programme and the different teams that we set up such as the community health networks, the community intervention teams, the chronic disease management teams and the disease programme for older people. From what I see, and from what I am told about every day, this is starting to have an enormous impact in terms of the system. I do not wish to downplay the other issues, because colleagues are working hard on all of them, so it is not fair to say that they are less important but that shift to the left is the biggest change that is happening, which is starting to have an enormous impact now on the health system. Based on the plans that Mr. Reid set out in detail in his opening remarks, by the end of the year we will have further advanced these teams. There has been enormous change, as well as the increase in the public health capacity. It is not as obvious at the moment because we have 1,400 people with Covid and, with the separation of beds, that is having an impact on the reality of the capacity, but if we could get to a post-Covid phase, the initial staff and beds could make a difference in terms of addressing the waiting lists and preparing for next winter where we will clearly have challenges again. I am sorry, as that is a long-winded way of answering Senator Black's question. There are plenty of positives there, but of course there are issues that we need to address.