Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. I did meet Tony Wilkinson outside the gates of Leinster House. At the moment, there are five Parkinson's disease nurse specialists in the acute section, that is, in acute neurology. They are in Limerick, St. Vincent's, Tallaght, the Mater and Galway hospitals. The Deputy made the point that we do not have one of the nurse specialists in Cork at the moment. That is something we need to address. We also need to do so in the context of other parts of the country. The aim of the national clinical programme for neurology is equitable access to a high-quality service. That has to guide where we invest and where we deploy specialist nurses, both in terms of the clinical area, namely, Parkinson's disease, and, as the Deputy stated, the geographical area, recognising that there is no such nurse specialist in that area at the moment.

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