Ms Anne O'Connor:

The Deputy will recall that at the beginning of the pandemic, we stopped all scheduled activity other than time-dependent critical surgeries. People were assessed on the basis of their clinical need. We worked with the private hospitals in terms of referring the most urgent cases. Our waiting lists did grow. We saw a reduction in them last summer. We managed to stabilise and start reducing those numbers. The surge in infection at the beginning of this year saw us stop all of that activity again, so it is fair to say that all scheduled work has been hammered. Many services have now re-initiated a lot of their activity. We have seen considerable progress in some sites. The national figures give an overall number. When we look at the figures site by site, however, we can see that some sites are doing a considerable amount of scheduled activity.

On cancer care, we have sought to prioritise. Within those numbers, as with any waiting list, people are triaged and the most urgent will be seen first. That is what we did during the pandemic.

There are different responses in orthopaedics and other specialties. The numbers are huge when one looks at the overall waiting list but the inpatient and day-case lists have been dealt with and in terms of stabilising, they have come back more quickly. Our longest lists relate to outpatient activity. We are coming up with different ways of working to address those lists. We are currently in the process of agreeing some immediate actions around reducing some of those lists.

There has been a significant increase in our unscheduled care activity. The committee will know that the emergency departments in many of our big hospitals are extremely busy. That drives a lot of the activity in hospitals and means that we continually have to scale back scheduled care. We are constantly trying to manage the balance between unscheduled care and the activity the Deputy is talking about. We are seeking to do a lot of activity before the end of the year to make an impact. Critically, we intend to do that before the serious winter flu season kicks in.