The good news in the paper from Dolk and colleagues is that the severity of disabilities and overall rates of cerebral palsy (CP) in very low birthweight infants born in Northern Ireland decreased during the 1990s. This followed an increase in the 1980s, observed in many places following the introduction of assisted ventilation to neonatal intensive care. However, according to their paper the CP rates for births <1000g were still higher between 1994 and1997 than those observed in the early 1980s.