Special report: Lyme disease - Failure to tackle tick problem may come back to bite us

A ten-fold increase in the debilitating disease should have alarm bells ringing, writes Donal Hickey, especially as some experts believe the real rate is even higher.

The HSE has confirmed a ten-fold increase in the number of patient samples being positive after first-stage testing for Lyme disease in the Cork/Kerry region alone, in just over a decade.