Mr. Bernard Gloster:

The Deputy should have been on the interview board. To be fair, through circumstances I have had the privilege to have done some work with all of my predecessors - Brendan Drumm, Cathal Magee, Tony O'Brien and Paul Reid. I think that, without kicking the can down the road, each manages in their own time. I am not somebody who retrospectively looks back to say that something was terrible and I am going to be better, or something was great and I am going to be even greater. The job and the task are more complex. I am coming to the health service at a different time to my predecessors. Mr. Reid was here in wartime, if one wants to use that phrase, in terms of the pandemic. I recognise what he did in that period. I am coming in the post-pandemic period with the cumulative impact both of history prior to the pandemic and that of the pandemic period on the health service, both in terms of opportunity and challenge. If anything will mark my time as different, as opposed to me being different, it will be achieving in a complex environment, more simple and easy decision-making processes that will directly benefit people more quickly while at the same time doing the job to the highest standards in terms of corporate governance and other things. However, simplicity of process is ultimately no good if it does not benefit the 690,000 people on waiting lists at the start of this year. If the experience of people who today are in any of the country's emergency departments is not better, then I will not have done a good job.