There has been a 33 per cent decrease in the number of staff working on the site of the new national children’s hospital since the start of the new year, politicians have been told.
Building on the site at St James’s Hospital in Dublin began in 2016 after years of disagreement over the location of the hospital.
The following eight years were marked by ballooning costs – from €987 million to €2.2 billion, with repeated delays exacerbated by an increasingly fractious relationship between the builders, BAM, and the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board, which oversees the project.
The hospital’s completion date has been delayed once again, from June to September 2025, and patients are not due to be treated in there until June 2026 at the earliest.
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At a meeting of the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Thursday morning, Phelim Devine, project director of the development board, said last October, when BAM committed to complete the hospital by June, there were 750 workers on site.
“Following that commitment, there was a bump. It bumped up to 900. But since January, that’s slowly dropping off every month. It’s now down below 600,” he said in response to a question from Social Democrats TD Aidan Farrelly.
David Gunning, chief executive of the board, said he did not have faith in BAM, the contractor as this is the “15th new timeline”.
[ National children’s hospital builder completes only 60% of progressOpens in new window ]
Asked if he believed this new deadline would be met, Mr Gunning said it was “too soon to tell”, as the board had not yet had the opportunity to “forensically examine the programme”.
“It is possible to get this hospital done by the 30th of September,” Mr Gunning said, but only “if the appropriate resourcing is provided to get it done”.
Those resources are not there “at the moment”, he said, “but that doesn’t mean it can’t be provided”.
Mr Gunning was asked about the status of legal claims. The Comptroller and Auditor General, Seamus McCarthy, said the development board paid BAM €122 million for a claim around delays.
He said there was a high volume of claims coming in from the contractor, but there were 16 claims that amount to about €800 million relating to delays. One claim is valued at between €200 and €300 million, he added.
“There is duplication and triplication within [those] 16 claims,” he said. “The contractor has to prove quite a lot to make these claims stick. It has to be dealt with, examined and analysed in a great deal of detail.”
In a statement on Thursday evening, BAM Ireland said that over the past seven months “in the region of 70 significant change orders, each of which can include multiple design changes, have been issued to BAM. This has inevitably delayed substantial completion”.
On worker levels, the contractor added that the project has “always been fully resourced by BAM” and is currently resourced at about 50 per cent higher than expected for this stage.
Also before the committee on Thursday, Lucy Nugent, chief executive of Children’s Health Ireland (CHI), apologised for the breakdown in trust that has occurred between patients and CHI, particularly in relation to orthopaedic services.
She said the surgeon at the centre of a controversy about the use of unauthorised springs in three children’s spinal surgeries, referred to as Surgeon A, remains on paid, voluntary leave while a “HR process” is under way.
A recent report on the matter by the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) criticised CHI for its culture and governance.
Ms Nugent said it was her role as chief executive to ensure “robust processes” were in place so staff feel “psychological safety to speak up if they see something wrong”.
Meanwhile, in the Dáil, Sinn Féin‘s finance spokesman Pearse Doherty called on Tánaiste Simon Harris to take responsibility for a “build as you go” contract for the hospital that “declared open season on the public finances”.
Mr Harris, who was minister for health at the time of the contract signing, said that, considering €110 billion is being spent annually, “investing just over €2 billion over a number of years for a hospital that will serve children well into the next century is a good thing to do, an appropriate thing to do, and it will make a very, very significant difference to children’s health”.
When challenged by Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín, Mr Harris accepted responsibility, saying: “Of course I am responsible. I am responsible for bringing the decision to cabinet. I am going to be responsible for a world class facility.”
Mr Tóibín told the Tánaiste that “accountability and yourself are like oil and water”.
Mr Harris said “nobody gets everything right in politics” and told Mr Tóibín ”you sit over there and correct everybody’s homework".
He said Mr Tóibín must rehearse his lines “in front of the mirror in the morning”. The easiest thing to do in politics, if looking to avoid a challenging situation is to “never make a decision”, Mr Harris added.
