To ask the Minister of Health to detail his Department's progress to create more specialist surgery hubs.

Dedicated capacity for elective surgery has been enhanced through continued development of elective care centres across Northern Ireland.

Day Procedure Centres are operational at Lagan Valley Hospital and Omagh Hospital supporting a range of surgical specialties. We have three Elective Overnight Stay Centres at the Mater Hospital, South West Acute Hospital and Daisy Hill Hospital for intermediate complexity surgery that may require an overnight stay in hospital. In addition, there are cataracts centres at Downe, South Tyrone and Mid Ulster Hospitals and an orthopaedic hub at Musgrave Park Hospital which includes the Duke of Connaught Unit, a dedicated orthopaedic Day Procedure Centre.

Considerable progress has been made through the development of dedicated elective care centres with positive impacts on waiting times. Ongoing work in these centres will be closely monitored to ensure continued progress on delivery of the intended objectives.

Continued development of dedicated elective care centres will be considered in the wider context of ongoing transformation of elective care services across the HSC system and will be subject to availability of sustainable funding. In the meantime, we continue to ensure that the HSC is making best use of the resources currently available to provide maximum benefit for patients, whilst ensuring high quality, effective and efficient, value for money services.