Mr. Bernard Gloster:

From my perspective - and I take the points and observations made earlier by Deputies Shortall and Cullinane and by other members - additional or increased demand is a feature of what we are dealing with demographically, in relation to pent-up demand post-Covid, and so on. That overtook us in 2023 in a way that we did not envisage but, equally, our own internal efficiencies have proved in the latter months of 2023 that we got a higher outturn from our service than we expected. There are challenges and good on both sides of that. What I said last Sunday week remains the case. The impact of us not achieving what we wanted to achieve for 2024 is under two headings. First, there is no doubt there will be an element of deficit in the accounts for next year because the only alternative to that would be to cut services. To be fair, I have not been asked to do that. That is the first point, so how we deal with the challenge next year becomes the issue. The second impact for next year is that there will be a slower pace of development of different strategies than there has been for the last two or three years. We will consolidate what we have and do the best we can with them. There is lots of work we can do. It is not all doom and gloom but we will not grow all of our development strategies as fast as we would have liked. That is essentially the impact.