The Irish Times view on the National Children’s Hospital: a project cloaked in secrecy

Already a byword for delay and overspending, the giant construction project that is the National Children’s Hospital is the focus of yet another dispute between the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board (NPHDB), which is tasked with building the hospital, and the main contractor, BAM.

With the long-delayed building now finally approaching completion, the board says BAM has not completed a compliant programme of works while the contractor says it was preparing the programme update “based on the scope as currently known”. This latest disagreement between the two sides relates to the layout of ventilation systems in the operating theatres.

[ Children’s hospital lead contractor told to stop key works on half of facility’s operating theatres ]

After a specialist consulting firm raised concerns about this issue, it emerged that remedial works may be needed in half the 22 theatres. BAM was told to stop works in May and then told to resume them in June. Sinn Féin, quoting an unnamed source, has suggested these works may cost €50 million or more; the NPHDB says the issues are relatively minor and will not delay completion of the project.

Inevitably, the dispute has become a political football, with the Government in damage limitation mode and Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald accusing Ministers of “carelessness” with taxpayers’ money and of being “asleep at the wheel”.

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More than four years have passed since The Irish Times revealed the mushrooming cost of the children’s hospital – up to €1.4 billion, from €650 million at the time planning permission was sought in 2015. Since then, the project has been cloaked in secrecy. Board minutes are published late and heavily redacted. TDs on the Public Accounts Committee say they have been stonewalled in efforts to glean information. The normal mechanisms for ensuring transparency that operate in a democracy have been sacrificed to the goal of ensuring the project stays on the rails and the hospital gets built.

Construction is now 85 per cent complete. The building is an impressive presence at the St James’s Hospital campus. There is no going back. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said this week he anticipates the first patients being treated in the hospital in 2024, though those close to the project think this is unlikely. No one in Government, the Department of Health or the NPHDB will say how much the project will ultimately cost. Perhaps even they do not know, given BAM has submitted more than 2,000 claims against the board and many of these have yet to be adjudicated.

When it does open, the hospital will transform children’s care in Ireland. It won’t add greatly to the existing total of beds in the system, though every young patient will be accommodated in single rooms rather than wards. The Government will get its “grand projet” but future generations will be saddled with the cost of paying for it.