Builder Bam has not provided an updated substantial completion date for the long-delayed new national children’s hospital, the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee (Pac) will be told on Thursday.
Dust in ventilation ducts is “one of the main issues” causing difficulties, the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board (NPHDB), which is in charge of the design and delivery of the facility, will tell the Committee.
It is also expected to maintain there were “an unprecedented 106,500 defects in the 5,728 rooms in the hospital” that Bam had to address.
The NPHDB will say that normally compliance inspections look at a sample of 10 per cent of rooms in detail, but “on this project 100 per cent of the rooms are being inspected to ensure the right clinical and regulatory quality and standards”. It will say this is more time and resource intensive but necessary to protect the State’s interests.
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The NPHDB is also likely to say that to date about €1.648 billion has been spent on the project, which is being developed at St James’s Hospital in Dublin. The hospital received planning permission a decade ago.
NPHDB chief officer David Gunning is expected to tell the committee in an opening statement that construction of the new hospital “is now in its final stages, with significant progress achieved across all areas”.
“On the 24th March 2026, Bam Ireland confirmed to the NPHDB that it would not deliver on its commitment to reach substantial completion of the national children’s hospital Ireland by the 30th April 2026, which is approximately 40 months later than the revised contract date of 2nd December 2022. Instead, it said it would complete a large majority of the building, but crucially not all of it.”
“This will be the 19th time Bam has changed its own substantial completion date. The employer’s representative (the independent third party responsible for administering the contract) wrote to Bam on the 27th March 2026 to formally request an updated contract programme. At the point in time we provided this opening statement to the committee, this programme update had not been provided by Bam Ireland to the employers representative”, Gunning is expected to say.
It is anticipated he will also tell the committee that NPHDB and Children’s Health Ireland (the group that runs paediatric hospitals in Dublin) were primarily focused on an area within the building known in hospital planning and design terms as the “hot block”.
This includes the emergency department, imaging and diagnostics, laboratories, clinical engineering at the lower ground and level 0 as well as the critical-care and operating theatres at levels one and two.
“While we were advised to expect levels one and two in early March 2026, we now expect Bam to hand over level one and level two in the coming weeks. Once these areas are in place, the NPHDB and Children’s Health Ireland can continue progressing with additional fit out and equipping activities.”
“These areas are close to completion standard, but the contractor is continuing to resolve commissioning issues and rework areas that were not correct the first time. One of the main issues is dust in the ventilation ducts. I think you will all appreciate that we cannot accept critical areas such as theatres where the contractor has not removed the dust and dirt in these ducts.”
Gunning is expected to argue that Bam missed its stated substantial completion dates “primarily due to its failure to deploy sufficient skilled labour and competent management resources to properly supervise the site and maintain effective quality assurance processes”.
“As a result, there has been no consistent ‘right-first-time’ approach to delivery. Bam has also failed to properly programme, co-ordinate, and sequence the works in a logical and efficient manner. This has led directly to disruptions, inefficiencies, and significant on-site rework.”
Bam did not comment on Tuesday.
