Northern Ireland's health minister Robin Swan warned recently that it could take five to ten years to get waiting lists down to acceptable levels.

We may have coped well in testing circumstances during a pandemic, but making our health service fit for purpose in the years ahead remains a major challenge.

So can our politicians be depended upon to see the bigger picture or will they always

feel under pressure to do what they think will prove popular when they need to win votes?

Can you ever take the politics out of health? Can you marry Louise?

Well, I think Mark, there's as much chance of taking politics out of health as there were attempts this week to take England's top football teams out of the Premier League.

I can't see it happening.

Politics and health, particularly in Northern Ireland, go hand in hand.

And, you know, it'll be some day when that happens, I think.

Maeve?

Well, I think we love in Ireland, so politics is very much in our DNA.

However, I mean, if the question is can we take sectarian politics and politics or the delivery

of health based on religion or a religious headcount, then absolutely, in my view.

Mark?

As much as I would love to say yes, Mark, I think the reality is we will never be able to take politics out of health.

Health is personal, political and indeed societal.

And I think we all have a view, but the key and the lesson from the pandemic is collaborative politics does make a difference in Northern Ireland.

As we look forward to the easing of COVID restrictions, we might well wonder how the health service here.

So massively impacted by what's happened in the past year, of course, can begin to get back to normal again.

And it's not just about getting back to where we were a year ago.

It's about dealing with

the huge issues the system was already facing anyway. So in this edition of Red Lines, we're

...