Are we building a children’s hospital or digging a money pit?

The “final project cost” is now €1,433bn, €453m higher than the €983m approved in 2017, writes Alison O'Connor

New Zealand got it right when they named their national children’s hospital, in Auckland, Starship Children’s Health. What a lovely and child-friendly name.

It’s great that we’re following their lead in trying to build a first-class paediatric health facility.

In our case, though, rather than simply naming it after a spaceship, we appear to be spending enough money to build a hospital and send a medical team to the moon.

Our children’s hospital may yet be the most expensive hospital in the world. The absolute best bit — wait for it — is that the people in charge insist they have taken the correct approach, despite costs more than doubling on the original estimate to an expected €1.7bn.

We’ve seen it so many times at Oireachtas committees that we could write the script in advance. I like to think of it as the l’Oreal ‘because we’re worth it’ approach. We listen to people giving evidence of great financial overruns or of huge salaries, but they always toughen it out. How can they not be mortified? I would be.

Is there a special course they attend to learn not to rise to the bait of the questioning politicians, yet silently communicate the message that their questioners lack the smarts to grasp the nuances of this highly complex situation?

Wednesday at the health committee saw the usual scenario play out, despite the eye-watering sums involved, which are having a huge knock-on effect on other badly needed health projects around the country.

In fact, the massive sums are a new level here. As Stephen Donnelly, Fianna Fáil health spokesman, said, the project team building the hospital has “completely and catastrophically” failed in its job, and in its obligations to the State, by not controlling costs.

The response was a mental shoulder shrug, a ‘shure what can you do, these oul’ projects come in on the pricey side, despite your best efforts’, attitude, ‘what with the bloody building inflation and whatever’

Maybe we should have asked more specific, probing questions about construction costs.

There was much chat of “due diligence” and “de-risking” and “taking uncertainty out of it” and how future risk lay with the contractor.

If you are a fan of architect Dermot Bannon’s house-improvement TV show, Room to Improve, you will know that things can get a little out of hand on building projects when ambitions outmatch your budget.

But even Bannon’s worst offenders would have their breath taken away with what has gone on with the children’s hospital, which is to be located at the St James’s campus in Dublin.

Indeed, as we Room to Improve fans know, Bannon would quickly put a halt to the gallop of those with the most grandiose of notions. But in this case, the millions of euro, for whatever reason, were allowed to mount by the day.

The hospital had been expected to cost €650m, when planning permission was granted in April 2016. At the time, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar was health minister.

Yesterday, Mr Donnelly said he remembered being on the Oireachtas Finance Committee when the National Lottery was sold, in 2014, and that the talk then was that the €400m raised would build the children’s hospital.

Tom Costello, chairman of the National Paediatric Development Board, who was joined by project director, John Pollock, clarified yesterday that the “final project cost” is now €1,433bn, €453m higher than the €983m approved by the Government in 2017.

Mr Costello does a great game face, which he maintained throughout the questioning at the committee.

Indeed, he said there were “lessons to be learned” and that the board is “deeply disappointed” and acknowledged the significant cost increases and the challenges they pose.

Sinn Féin’s health spokeswoman, Louise O’Reilly, rather dryly noted the use of the word “disappointment”, and told Mr Costello that she herself might use a stronger word, in the circumstances.

But the hospital board of management’s attitude was that ‘lessons had to be learned’ from the tendering, but that the approach remained correct.

As Fine Gael TD Kate O’Connell so pithily put it:

I’m not a big fan of fellas learning on the job when they are getting paid to do the job.

Regular followers of how we do business in the Irish public sector will have known in advance the answer to the question as to whether anyone senior involved had lost their job, or if any commercial contracts had been cancelled as a result of the cost overruns.

No, they hadn’t. But it was a great reassurance to hear the chairman say: “Cost certainty has now been achieved.” Better late than never, eh?

The entire fiasco merely adds to the notion that anything to do with health in this country is a basket case.

The Taoiseach, the man on whose watch all this happened, has confirmed that the overruns at the hospital mean that €100m worth of other health investments all over the country, such as hospital beds, cancer and cardiac facilities, primary care units, and residential care beds, will be affected.

These stoppages and curtailments may have an impact for up to five years. The second cath lab at University Hospital Waterford and the cystic fibrosis unit at Beaumont Hospital in Dublin are possible casualties.

“This,” as Stephen Donnelly said, “ is the reality of the incompetence and failure in relation to financial controls from your board.”

We have waited an awfully long time for a new children’s hospital in this country and it is badly needed.

But why does it have to end up being one of the most expensive hospitals in the world?

There is an element of a Kerry joke about getting a price on the cable you need, but not knowing that you’d need an eye-watering 5,000km of it.

Of course, we want a digital hospital, but maybe we have overstretched ourselves here, aimed too high.

Everyone wants a world-class health facility for our children — especially given the decades of delay — but have we lost the run of ourselves, adding on too many bells and whistles, including a high-end design that wouldn’t look out of place as an art museum?

The problem is, as usual, that we’ve learnt the lessons too late. If we learnt anything at all.