Children's hospital contractor 'committed' to June 2025 completion date, says Health Minister

Stephen Donnelly said that he held a “pretty open and frank discussion” with the chief executive of Royal BAM, the Dutch owner of the contractor’s Irish outfit, last week over the ongoing delays to the hospital. Picture: Sam Boal/Collins

The National Children’s Hospital (NCH) contractor is “committed” to the June 2025 completion date, Health Minister Stephen Donnelly has said, following a meeting with Bam Ireland's parent company.

The NCH has been repeatedly delayed and suffered severe cost overruns, with the hospital now expected to set the State back over €2.2bn.

In recent weeks, the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board (NPHDB) have become embroiled in a row with Bam over the project, with the board criticising the continued delays.

Mr Donnelly said that he held a “pretty open and frank discussion” with the chief executive of Royal BAM, the Dutch owner of the contractor’s Irish outfit, last week over the ongoing delays to the hospital.

Following the meeting, Mr Donnelly said that Royal Bam is now engaging with the NPHDB to provide the government with a work programme for completion of the NCH.

Mr Donnelly said that BAM must now provide additional workers to the NCH site, following its commitment to a June 2025 completion deadline.

“They have committed to the June deadline and what I now want to see is a schedule that the board, acting on our behalf, comes back and says ‘yes, we believe this’,” Mr Donnelly said, speaking on RTÉ’s This Week.

My view and the view of our board, is that they simply have not had enough workers on site. There’s lots of complexity, but that at its core, there haven’t been enough people on site finishing off this hospital.

The Health Minister also said that the plan to commission the hospital with equipment would be accelerated, with teams set to fit out the hospital much earlier now.

With the further delays, there have been concerns raised that the hospital opening date will be pushed out further to 2026 at the earliest.

The NPHDB recently appeared before the Oireachtas Health Committee, where it set out that the project’s price would not be inflated further as it is unwilling to provide further funds to Bam over the delays.

Meanwhile, Mr Donnelly also said that he wanted to meet again with the parents of Aoife Johnston, the 16-year-old who died tragically in the emergency department of University Hospital Limerick (UHL) in December 2022.

It comes as their the Johnston family solicitor has called for a statutory inquiry into Aoife’s death, following the publication of a HSE report which found that her death was “almost certainly avoidable”.

Mr Donnelly said that he wanted to discuss the matter with her parents, Carol and James.

“Solicitors sometimes talk about statutory inquiries like they will solve all of the problems and answer all of the questions there is,” Mr Donnelly said.

However, he cited the ongoing inquiry into the ‘Grace’ case, which has been running for six years with a report yet to be issued.

“Unfortunately, what happens with statutory inquiries is [a] very legalistic process and they don’t always give what people want.”

However, Mr Donnelly said that he was not ruling “anything in or out” on the matter.