National Children’s Hospital to cost 'substantially' more than €2bn 

Construction company BAM had consistently only achieved 65% completion of its work programme performance targets to date, Public Accounts Committee was told. Picture: Colin Keegan/ Collins 

The new National Children’s Hospital is set to cost “substantially” more than €2bn when finally completed, though the body with responsibility for its construction insists having it finished by late 2024 is now “achievable”.

The project, first greenlit in 2015, was last budgeted to cost more than €1.7bn in 2019.

However, at the Public Accounts Committee on Thursday morning, no one from the National Paediatric Health Development Board (NPHDB) was willing to contradict assertions by Labour’s Alan Kelly that the build will "come in substantially over €2bn”, although official budgetary projections are not likely to be delivered to Government until next month.

The committee heard a new timeline for substantial completion of the project of end October 2024 was “achievable” and that the NPHDB is seeing “some encouraging signs” with regard to that goal.

One of those signs is that the number of rooms completed in the hospital was “just not anywhere near where it should have been” as at the end of last month, chief officer of the National Paediatric Health Development Board David Gunning said.

He said the figure was now 32%. “We’re getting some encouragement from that one metric,” he said.

The NPHDB and lead contractor BAM have been involved in bitter disputes regarding the project almost since construction began in 2016. Picture Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin

He agreed, however, that construction company BAM had consistently only achieved 65% completion of its work programme performance targets to date.

“They would say that they have enough workers” on site, Mr Gunning said, but added in his opinion if only 65% of work was being completed, that was unlikely to be the case.

“Our contention would have been that more resources, more supervision was required,” he said. 

He added the NPHDB have had a number of meetings with the head of BAM Ireland John Wilkinson and “we have got assurances that they believe they can hit the October date”.

Mr Gunning said he had not been in a position to expand on a completion date in the recent past as no acceptable work programme had been received from BAM prior to September of this year.

That October completion date was treated dubiously by the members of the PAC, with Mr Kelly stating that in his opinion the project hasn’t “a snowball’s chance” of hitting its target, adding he thinks “it likely it won’t even open in 2025”.

Bitter disputes

The NPHDB and lead contractor BAM have been involved in bitter disputes regarding the project almost since construction began in 2016, both regarding the slow progress of the build and thousands of claims worth hundreds of millions of euro brought by the contractor concerning disputes over the project’s scope.

Asked by Sinn Fein’s Imelda Munster whether the NPHDB would seek to warn other State agencies such as the HSE about the “nightmare” the board has experienced on the children’s hospital project, Mr Gunning said he could “definitively say yes” to the question.

“That engagement has been and is happening,” he said. “We’re just trying to get the thing across the line.”

At the same hearing, the head of Children’s Health Ireland, which will commission the hospital over a period of roughly six months following its substantial completion, said accurately knowing when that completion date would be “is key” as “all of our planning flows out from that date”.

“We have to get this hospital open, almost 5,000 staff have to be made familiar with the building. Certainty around the date is important to us,” Eilish Hardiman said.