My question is to the Minister for Health. As he is well aware, we have a state-of-the-art facility of which the people of Waterford can be proud, the new Dunmore wing of University Hospital Waterford, UHW, which will have 20 beds for the Waterford hospice. For the past 20 years the people of Waterford and the south east have engaged in massive fundraising to endorse €6 million towards this project. Unfortunately, the opening of the new hospice for the south east will be delayed until next year as the HSE has to allocate a budget to hire staff. This information came in reply to a question from Deputy Cullinane earlier in the year. The reply stated that staffing would happen when the budget was allocated.

Once again, people are waiting and, unfortunately, they do not have time to wait when they are dying.

I will pose my question to the Minister for Health. Local Deputies and I have raised this issue for some time. I commend the fact the building is now there and has been kitted out but the funding for staffing simply is not there. There is a state-of-the-art palliative care unit on the first two floors of this building and the top three floors have 72 acute beds. The problem is that the people who want to run and manage the service do not have the staff because they have not been given any funding to do so. My mam passed away this year in a palliative care unit in Harold's Cross in Dublin. Many people in the south east would want to be able to have their loved ones as close as possible when suffering from something. It is very important to the people of Waterford. How have we ended up with a building having been built, kitted out and provided with capital funding, yet it does not have the funding to recruit staff? Will the Minister commit to do that as soon as possible so that we can open this as soon as we can?

I thank Deputies Butler and Cullinane and the Minister of State, Deputy Halligan, for raising this with me. We intend to open three new palliative care facilities: the one the Deputy referred to in Waterford, one in Mayo, which the Minister, Deputy Ring, has communicated with me about, and one in Wicklow. I take the Deputies' points. The facility is there and we need to open it as quickly as possible. I hope that we can progress it this year. In the spirit in which we worked on other issues, I suggest that I meet the Oireachtas Members from Waterford next week, along with HSE officials, and we will see if we can move forward on it.