The big issues: No 3 - Health: Patients in Co Meath who are suspected by their GP of having prostate cancer must wait at least six months to be seen by a specialist.
This is because there is no full-time consultant urologist in the northeast region.
The limited service that is available is provided by a urologist who is based outside the region but does a number of sessions at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda.
This is entirely unacceptable for patients, according to Dr Martin White, a GP in Nobber, Co Meath. "At every level we have too few consultants and the waiting lists are getting longer."
Even waiting times for patients attending GPs in Meath are becoming an issue. One surgery in Navan has said it will not take new patients because it has so many people on file already.
The population of Meath has increased dramatically in recent years but has not been matched by investment in primary care services. "We have nowhere near enough GPs currently to cope with the workload and the situation will get worse," Dr White predicted.
These are all issues he says patients are raising with byelection candidates on the doorsteps.
Medical cards are another issue, he says, and one which has already been raised by a number of the candidates.
"Low income families are being squeezed out of the medical-card scheme because the over 70s are eating up so much of the GMS budget. Patients we looked after for years on medical cards have in the last year or so lost medical cards," he said.
There is also general agreement on the need for more investment in Our Lady's Hospital in Navan, which has an A&E unit dealing with over 18,000 attendances a year. Somewhat unusually, its A&E does not normally have difficulties with overcrowding but it recently lost its recognition for training of junior doctors. It does not have a full-time A&E consultant and doctors in the hospital have met the Medical Council to air concerns about such a busy A&E unit not having a full time consultant.
Tony Fitzpatrick, of the Irish Nurses' Organisation (INO), says the hospital has not been developed to meet the increased demands placed on it by a rapidly-expanding population. It has 196 beds, which clearly is not sufficient. Other health issues of concern in Meath include the need to revamp a number of health centres. In recent days the INO asked the Health and Safety Authority to investigate complaints of a mice infestation, smelly water and poor sanitation at the Clonard health centre. The building which houses the centre is completely unsuitable and is not wheelchair- or buggy-accessible, Mr Fitzpatrick said.
Similar issues are causing concern in Kildare North, where again a massive increase in the population has placed enormous pressure on the local hospital, Naas General.
There were 28 patients on trolleys in its A&E unit yesterday and 22 the day before, according to the INO. The unit caters for 21,964 attendances a year.
INO industrial relations officer for the region Phil Ní Sheaghdha said the hospital simply does not have enough beds. It has 199 beds at present and has plans to add a further 30 by 2007, which she claims is not enough given the numbers currently on trolleys.
Dr Barry Boland, a GP practising in Rathangan and Monasterevin, agrees bed numbers in the hospital are inadequate. "People are pouring into Kildare and we need more beds for them." Medical-card access and GP manpower are also election issues in Kildare as elsewhere, he added.
"There are not enough doctors. There was a list in Ballymore Eustace, which is only 15 miles from Tallaght, and it took the health board two years to get a GP to fill that post," he said.
"A number of GPs have closed their lists both to new private and new medical card patients because they can't cope with any more patients. Patients are finding it difficult to get a doctor and it will get worse," he added.
It was very difficult for young doctors to buy or rent properties to set up practices without tax incentives, he said, before criticising the lack of investment in the Government's primary care strategy.