Professor David Keegan:

There is a hump to be seen on slide No. 6. This it shows how the zero-to-three-months waiting lists have gone up significantly. There was a dip around Covid, so people were not getting referred and the hump represents the period after that. That is what scares us. We have reduced the number of long waiters for now, but if we do not have the capacity in the system through the initiatives we are talking about, then down the line those patients in the zero-to-three-months category will become people who have been waiting 13, 15 or 18 months. Some of those could be patients in danger of permanent irreversible blindness because we do not have all the new referral piece up and running and that is what we are looking to try and tackle through all these initiatives.