Mr. Paul Reid:

I will make a couple of comments in response and then call on my colleagues. First, I welcome the Senator's comments. She mentioned she was on a recent site visit with the acting Chairman and I hope she got a good insight into the services and the commitment and passion from our staff on the ground. I reassure the Senator, because she made the point very well, that certainly none of us and our teams on the ground view anything to do with the waiting lists as numbers or tables or anything like that. There is an absolute passion in the health system, which I have experienced, regarding the frustration of waiting lists.

There are a couple of general points about addressing this, as I mentioned earlier. There is a big legacy issue with waiting lists, and specifically with children. There are two aspects to it. One is the resourcing and recruitment. Over the past two years we have seen record levels of recruitment into the health service. If one looks at the balance of the recruitment levels, we have often been criticised that it is just more managerial positions coming in, but any analysis will clearly demonstrate health and social care priorities, such as nurses, midwives, doctors and consultants. That has been consistent for the last two years, and our plan for this year has significant extra recruitment. I wish to make a point that I meant to make to Deputy Dillon as well. In recruiting the 12,500 net increase last year we actually had to recruit 35,000 staff between the 9,500 churn each year as well as people for testing, tracing and vaccinations.

I can give an assurance as well in terms of trying to recruit those specialties, particularly community specialists and for disabilities, be it speech and language therapists, occupational therapists or psychologists. It is a primary focus for us, and I assure the committee that we are as committed on that.

I will ask my colleagues to comment.