There was a time when back to school in September was all about settling down again into a comfortable familiar routine.

Not this year, our schools find themselves on the front line of coping with COVID.

Our healthcare system is creaking badly under the pressures of a fast approaching second winter of pandemic pressures.

Businesses are trying to adjust to the double challenge posed by the fallout from coronavirus and a new post-Brexit world.

And as for politics, well, there's another election on the way. Of course there is. Always good for sharpening our politicians keen sense of what to say and what to do to make themselves most electable.

Our political editor, Enda McLaughordy, will be sharing his thoughts with us in just a moment,

and our business and economics editor John Campbell is here too. But I want to start this edition of

Red Lines with our health correspondent, Mary Louise Connolly. We know politicians love to say they want

to take the politics out of health, Mary Louise. And when Robin Swan, the health minister said a

couple of months ago, he wants his plans to transform the healthcare

system to go unopposed politicians across the board were very clear they'll back his proposals

do you believe them they always happen to say when they're pushed on the record mark on political

programmes yes you know this is what we want to do. We will go as far as we can

in order to make Northern Ireland's health service

a better one and a much safer one.

But if you look at where we are,

this new term, September 2021,

what evidence is there that we actually have done anything?

There has been a lot of pontificating

that we'll take the politics

out of health, that we'll move forward. We had the health minister, Robin Swan, saying a few

months ago that politicking had cost lives. You can't go much further than that. And even within

...