Hospital waiting lists must be viewed in a context of a hospital system which discharged 920,000 in-patient and day cases in 2001. That represented an overall increase of 42,000 in the number of discharges or 5% over the figure for 2000. I take this opportunity to salute our hospitals and their staff on the productivity of the system, which is evident in these figures. Day case activity has increased by 10% from 324,000 day case discharges in 2000 to 359,000 day case discharges in 2001.