Thursday should have been a momentous day for the Irish health service. The much-lauded and long-awaited national children’s hospital was to finally reach substantial completion and be handed over to the State for commissioning.
But, just like the 17 other substantial completion dates that have come and gone, this too will pass without fanfare.
As the development board waits for the 19th such completion date, concern and scepticism is mounting in political circles about when the hospital will actually be delivered.
David Gunning, chief officer of the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board (NPHDB), has admitted that with so many missed deadlines, it would be naive to have confidence in future ones being met.
READ MORE
News from the NPHDB this week only served as a further blow to what remains of public confidence in the project. Dust in ventilation ducts is “one of the main issues” causing difficulties with regard to the completion of the project, according to a written statement provided to members of the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee.
The development board said there was “an unprecedented 106,500 defects in the 5,728 rooms in the hospital” which Bam, the contractor, had to address.
[ New national children’s hospital further delayed amid ventilation issueOpens in new window ]
Work is proceeding inside in an effort to speed up the opening of the facility. Children’s Health Ireland (CHI), which will operate the hospital upon opening, has progressively taken phased early access to areas of the hospital since December.
Level six is now “fully fitted out”, and in March early access was extended to areas on the ground floor, home to some of the hospital’s largest and most complex clinical areas, including the emergency department and radiology imaging.
Adding to this, CHI said “significant progress” on equipment installation has been made. Some 15 per cent of medical equipment, 14 per cent of non-medical equipment, 21 per cent of laboratory equipment and 16 per cent of ICT infrastructure has been installed.
Regardless of these steps, the repeated delays have come at a cost. In 2014, the final cost of the hospital was to be €800 million. By 2017, it rose to €983 million, rising again to €1.43 billion in 2018. Four years later, it stood at €1.73 billion in 2022 and the current estimated price tag is €2.24 billion.
But that’s before factoring in the significant number of claims the contractor has in against the development board. There are five sets of High Court proceedings in train, while the board said it is defending €899 million in claims.
Though the development board and the Minister for Health say their intention is to defend these claims, it remains to be seen in whose favour the court will rule.
Given the length of time such litigation takes to go through the legal system, it is likely to be some time before the State knows the true cost of this project once these legal costs are factored in.
The contractor has repeatedly denied it is to blame for the missed completion dates, and has sought to put the blame back on the development board for adding late stage “design changes”. The board and Minister maintain Bam is understaffing the site.
But the finger pointing has become a tired tale. The reality is a whole generation of children who were supposed to be served by this hospital has aged out of it being an option for them before it has even opened.
It is now four years on from when the hospital was supposed to be completed and the State is without a concrete opening date or final cost. Regardless of how impressive the building might be when it opens, by any metric, the development and delivery of this project can only be viewed as a failure.
