To ask the Minister of Health to detail any analysis his Department has made of the Healthy Life Expectancy UK: between 2011 to 2013 and 2022 to 2024 statistical bulletin, published by the Office of National Statistics.

Improving healthy life expectancy, along with reducing the health inequalities in this area, remains a particular challenge which my Department actively seeks to address through all its activity.

The Healthy Life Expectancy (HLE) statistics released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) continue to be of use to my Department in determining how the outcomes and recent trends in Northern Ireland compare with the rest of the UK.

While these releases are welcomed, the official HLE estimates produced by my Department provide a greater scope for analysis and in supporting the development of policy and practice. While the ONS estimates source data from a general household survey, the official NI estimates are sourced from the Health Survey Northern Ireland (HSNI) and, as this is a health focused survey, the accompanying information that is collected allows for a much greater depth of analysis into the key drivers of inequality gaps and changes in HLE.