National Children’s Hospital ‘delayed by two years and could cost more than €2bn’
THE new National Children’s Hospital may be delayed until well into 2024, two years behind its original schedule, the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee has been told.
The opening of the new facility on the St James’ site in Dublin was originally set for August next year.
A ‘thorough analysis’ of potential costs is meanwhile close to completion and a final determination could be arrived at by the end of this month or early March, the committee was told.
This is against the background that a project originally budgeted at €650m could yet exceed €2bn, according to some reports.
The project was five months behind in March 2020 when the pandemic struck but “as of today” the construction delay is 10 months, TDs were told.
Meanwhile the main contractor, BAM, has put in more than 700 claims at a total cost of €300m, ranging from €10,000 to tens of millions.
“We have about six claims that are of the order of €40m each,” said David Gunning, chief executive of the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board.
Mr Gunning said he believed the construction programme, as of last month, was about “20pc completed”.
He expected the level of claims from the contractor to continue, he said.
Sinn Féin’s Imelda Munster said: “You’ve made a complete hames of this.
“The management of the project has been a complete shambles.”
The Louth TD predicted it would be “the most expensive children’s hospital in the world”.
Fianna Fáil TD Marc MacSharry claimed the finish date was May 2024, as now outlined.
Meanwhile, it was confirmed that the fitting out and commissioning would take nine months before the hospital can open its doors.
Mr Gunning said it was fair to suggest that the situation of delays has been worsening month on month “up to relatively recently”.
He declined to share the possible final bill as it was “commercially sensitive”.
“By the end of November 2020, we should have spent €600m. We actually spent €328m,” he said.
Even with 1,000 workers on the site, the project would not recover the time lost.
But he said that of 466 claims brought by the development and settled so far through the contract, the net position was that the project had cost an additional €500,000.
The legal costs to date, however, were €128,000 in 2018; €691,000 in 2019; and €466,000 last year.
“We will be spending a considerable amount of money on the defence of those claims,” he said. The minister had been briefed on the likely cost, he said.
From 2019 to the middle of this year, an amount of €19m had been set aside for legal defence, he said.
“We get claims and we have no other choice but to defend these claims,” Mr Gunning said.
Mr MacSharry said the same developer was suing the State on nine other projects. If he were building a house and was sued by the builder, he would not use the same builder for his next house, he said.
Mr Gunning said the revised contractual completion date was now October 2022 because of Covid-19 site closure orders. But he accepted it would not be met.