The early word from Ashbourne seems to indicate that our colleague, Senator Thomas Byrne, has exceeded 30% of the poll. It is a great performance by him and our party. Without conceding anything, it looks like the Fine Gael candidate, Ms Helen McEntee, will also be successful and nobody on this side of the House begrudges her success.

Members may have watched a programme aired on television during the week on the chronic lack of nurses who specialise in the care of sufferers of Parkinson's disease in the south.

It would like sending an SOS from Titanic.

Some place other than Ashbourne.

Was the message a bit delayed? There is an excellent neurological team at the Cork University Hospital which works at the coal-face in terms of research on Parkinson's disease. Its work is being hampered by the lack of specialist Parkinson nurses. Six specialist nurses are attached to the Dublin region and there are several located around the country, including Galway and all of the major centres. Cork is the centre of the health universe in the south but has not one Parkinson nurse. The omission was highlighted by a team of specialists, one of whom is my son. I ask the Deputy Leader to bring the matter to the attention of the Minister for Health and ask him to remedy the situation. Clearly, it is an unfair and anomalous situation which must be addressed.