Mr. Stephen Mulvany:

Part of the reason is the level of Covid in the first six months of year. On the first three, four or five days of 2022, we had more Covid cases in the country than the total for 2020. By March we had more people in hospital with Covid, approximately 1,500, than in the previous 14 months. That made a big impact. The ongoing Covid impact is also hurting the hospitals. Some of the measures and separate pathways we had in place are not conducive to being as productive as we would like. Some of those are being stepped down and my colleagues can talk about that. The evidence is that people are also coming to us sicker and more frail and, therefore, they are staying longer. The elderly people are coming to us more frail and elderly people tend to stay longer anyway, but they are staying even longer. The system is trying to recover from that and is not yet back to its full capacity. It is getting there. We have also added capacity. That is what has allowed us to make some progress. They are some of the main reasons.