CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL COST SOARS TO €1.4BN
taoiseach claims budget broken by building costs
INCREASED construction expenses have been blamed for costs rocketing for the country’s new children’s hospital.
The National Children’s Hospital is currently under construction at St James’s in Dublin.
It was initially projected to cost €650million but that rocketed to an expected €1billion by April last year with speculation further rises could still happen.
It is set to replace three older facilities – Temple Street Children’s University Hospital, Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin and the National Children’s Hospital, Tallaght.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar was asked by Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin to explain why the current projected cost is €1.433billion.
He said increased construction costs made up most of the additional €400million.
Mr Varadkar said: “This morning Cabinet met and discussed the issue, discussed the escalating costs.
“We agreed to accept the new overall cost which is €1.433billion – that represents a €450million increase on what we had projected in April 2017.
“Of that, €319million is made up of increased construction costs and €50million is VAT.
“The remainder relates to staff planning, design teams, risk contingency and also the management equipment service to make sure the hospital is properly equipped.
“There will be further investigations as to how these costs escalated by so much since April last year.”
Mr Varadkar described the project as the “biggest single investment in healthcare” in Irish history.
He said: “It allows three rather old hospitals – Crumlin, Temple Street and Tallaght – to be replaced by a new state-ofthe-art hospital.
“This is going from a very antiquated old infrastructure, that is not up to standard, to what will be one of the best children’s hospitals in the world.”