FIRM WITH HISTORY OF MASSIVE OVERRUNS

Cost overruns and delays are not new for BAM, the firm contracted to build the children’s hospital.

Neither is the manner in which the taxpayer seems to end up picking up the tab.In May 2017, a large portion of a multistorey car park it was building at Eindhoven Airport in the Netherlands collapsed. Just three weeks ago, BAM reached a confidential settlement with the airport.

Also in 2017, it was involved in a massive cost and time overrun on building the largest sea lock in the world. Due to design errors the lock – at the North sea port city of IJmuiden – will be delivered over two years late with a cost overrun of about €100m. By last December, BAM’s losses on the project had reached €80m.

In February 2016, Enda Kenny turned the sod on a 6,000-seater event centre at Cork’s old Beamish and Crawford Brewery. the price tag was to be €53m and the Government agreed to contribute €20m. A year later BAM asked for an extra €12m.

the Port of Cork Company wound up in the commercial courts last year when BAM admitted it had made a €12m arithmetic mistake after it won a €46m contract for work at Ringaskiddy.

Details of how the matter was resolved have not been made public.

In the UK, BAM, via its subsidiary BAM Nuttall, won a contract for the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway. Due to be finished in 2009 at a cost of £116m, it was handed over to the council in 2011 at a reported cost of £152m. the matter went to court and in 2013 BAM Nuttall agreed to pay £33m to Cambridgeshire council.