John Crown (Independent)

On this happy day, 24 hours after President Obama in the White House publicly announced to the world that he was honouring Robbie Keane for being the Republic of Ireland's leading scorer, I would like to ask the Deputy Leader to bring to the attention of the relevant Minister during this, the year of science, that there are two other Irish people who, I believe, deserve recognition.

One of them is Professor Ernest Walton, RIP, who still has the unique distinction of being the only Irish recipient of any Nobel prize in science, a man who made a wonderful contribution to science when he was a very young researcher working with Cockcroft in the 1920s in Cambridge. The Cockcroft and Walton experiment led to the first splitting of the atom. Walton then returned to Ireland where he had a very serious and giving career in Trinity College, Dublin, as an academic and, following his retirement, in other advisory capacities. He also acted as an adviser to the Irish Government on science issues in an unofficial capacity and is felt to have been one of the original inspirers of the modernisation revolution which Lemass and others attempted to introduce into Ireland in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

It has been suggested on some of the online sites today that the new bridge being built across the Liffey at Marlborough Street close to Trinity College should be named the Ernest Walton bridge. This would be a very fine accolade. He has a number of structures named after him in academic-----