Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

As the Minister knows, my correspondence on this has been particularly directed to the hospices. He knows St. Francis Hospice, which serves my constituency and his. The other sources of funding the Minister refers to are the donations of the public in each area to develop, build and rebuild the absolutely vital services for people in the last stages of terminal illness. Not only that, but the hospice movement has evolved in an absolutely wonderful way in recent years. Nowadays it has service level agreements with big general hospitals to provide a hospice service where people could be dying under bright lights in a ward full of people. The Minister can make a declaration and there is a precedent in respect of the salaries of school secretaries. I do not deny there are problems with some organisations but the Minister must address this.

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