Mr. Bernard Gloster:

Some strides were made last year, and I hope I can make more this year. The Minister has approved the 2023 waiting list action plan. We are hoping this year to have a multi-annual plan, rather than having to do that every year. I know some people have criticised this year's plan as perhaps lacking in ambition. The volume of waiting lists at the start of the year versus the end of the year in totality is less 10%. However, I made this point with Claire Byrne when I was doing a fairly extensive interview with her. We sometimes forget the number of people who come on to waiting lists, and leave in a year. Some 1.56 million people went off waiting lists last year, and 1.53 million people came on. That is a huge volume of activity. I know this is the Minister's priority, and he has left me in doubt as to his view of it. Rather than getting caught up in the number of people on waiting lists, my focus is the length of time people are on them. The drive this year is to really reduce that. With that, we have to be accountable. That is what we have signed up to do for the people. It is extremely challenging, because part of our capacity to respond to waiting lists is in our hospitals, and our hospitals are repeatedly cancelling elective work because of the overflow in the emergency departments. There is a huge competing pressure there. We will have to improve our process, to be the very best we can be, and to be accountable to people. At the same time we need to recognise that by the end of 2023 people will still experience challenges in their waiting times, be that in emergency departments or on waiting lists. A part of this is about effort, and a part of it is about integrity in our relationship with the public about the reality of what we can do and the limitations of what we cannot do right now.