It is like a stage set without the actors - fully equipped wards with newly painted walls, brightly coloured duvet sets, quilt corners turned down invitingly, matching curtains framing sun-filled windows. Only the patients are missing.
This unit in St Vincent's Hospital, Mountmellick, Co Laois, has been ready for patients for more than a year.
The Midland Health Board spent more than £50,000 renovating three wards in the hospital to establish a 14-bed unit for elderly psychiatric patients due to be transferred from St Fintan's Psychiatric Hospital in Portlaoise.
Industrial relations problems have kept the beds empty, despite a waiting list in the area for admission to ordinary geriatric care in midlands hospitals.
Recent figures show there are 118 people waiting for such beds.
Mr John Moloney TD (FF) believes it makes no sense that the three wards have stayed empty.
"They are empty now for over a year. There has been a stand-off regarding the move. I would much prefer if the transfers from St Fintan's had occurred as soon as the wards were ready. The level of care Mountmellick can offer in a smaller unit is far better."
The public, he says, found it difficult to understand "how beds can lie idle when there are people on waiting lists".
Mr Moloney says he and the Minister for Health, Mr Cowen, met nurses' representatives in St Fintan's to discuss the matter a number of months ago. At the time the Minister said he found the situation "incomprehensible" from a patient's point of view.
According to St Vincent's assistant matron, Ms Catherine O'Keeffe, staff in the Mountmellick hospital were anxious to get patients into the unit as quickly as possible once staffing levels had been sorted out.
Mr Moloney says he can understand some of the nurses' reservations.
"In fairness to the nurses involved they have made the point that patients regard St Fintan's as their home and to take them out of that environment may cause anxieties. However, while they may be moving geographically, they would have the same nurses surrounding them and it is an excellent unit. St Fintan's is now an old empty structure."
The SIPTU chairman in St Fintan's, Mr Dick O'Hara, denies nurses were reluctant to transfer because of the distance between Portlaoise and Mountmellick.
"That is not true. Some people live in that area, some do not. It's a personal thing really. There is no reluctance on the part of St Fintan's nurses. Very few are going to be moving anyway."
Mr O'Hara says the move to Mountmellick formed part of the plan for the eventual closure of St Fintan's, which was finally agreed with nursing staff recently.
They voted overwhelmingly in favour of closure within the next three to five years. "We have been in negotiation with the health board for the last three months about closure," he says.
The board said in a statement it had reached agreement on "outstanding industrial relations matters" in relation to the closure of St Fintan's.
As well as in the Mountmellick unit, patients will be accommodated at a new £8.4 million acute psychiatric unit at Portlaoise General Hospital. The contract for the unit has gone to tender.
A health board spokeswoman said its 1998 service plan included provisions for the transfer of a number of long-stay patients to facilities more appropriate to their needs.
Following extensive consultation with patients' relatives at St Fintan's it was decided to provide facilities at elderly care centres at St Brigid's Hospital, Shaen, and St Vincent's Hospital, Mountmellick.