Minister ‘disappointed’ at Children’s Hospital room completion rate

The Minister for Health has said she is “disappointed” with the pace of construction of the National Children’s Hospital, and will meet with the CEO of the construction group BAM on Friday.

Speaking to reporters in Dublin on Wednesday Jennifer Carroll MacNeill said: “I’ve been there a couple of times in the last few weeks, and on every occasion that I’ve been there, I have not seen the number of people working there that I believe I should be to meet the April 30 deadline.”

She said she is “not satisfied” with the number of rooms being completed, adding that over a four-week average about 167 are finished a week, saying: “It’s becoming cumulatively worse relative to where it should be in terms of room completions.”

The project had an original completion date of August 2022 but has faced a series of delays, and costs have ballooned from a planned 650 million euro to an expected 2.2 billion euro.

Ms Carroll MacNeill said she had written to the global headquarters of the main contractor on the project, BAM, and said its CEO and two senior executives will meet with her at the hospital on Friday.

During recent visits to the hospital, she said she was “disappointed” she did not see “hundreds and hundreds of people working there”, and “if there were I didn’t see them”.

She said she was asked to be shown where people were working and was brought to an “enormously empty” basement where she counted 16 people, two of whom were working.

“My dissatisfaction is not just visual and anecdotal, it’s one that’s backed up by the tracked figures by the hospital development board of the number of people who are there and productively working,” she said.

Ms Carroll MacNeill said she hoped the BAM executives would be able to explain to her “where the people are”, and “how they’re going to meet the deadline, that is their deadline, which is one that they’ve missed several times.”

Asked if she expected to be told the hospital’s completion date would be delayed, she said: “I can’t say what other people will say in the future.

“What I expect is for them to tell me how they’re going to meet the commitment that has been made, by them through a contract, to the Irish people.”

The minister was speaking at the launch of Ireland’s first national AI for Care Strategy at the Mater Hospital in Dublin.

She said Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) was “using every minute that it can in a productive way”, “because BAM have been slow”, and had used rooms already handed over to “make up equipment”.

“We’ve used the extra time that BAM has been slow to make up all of the workstations on wheels, for example, that will be used around the rest of the hospital,” she said.

Ms Carroll MacNeill said that in the last two weeks she had received access to the ground floor and the lower ground floor, describing the emergency department located there as “a demonstrably different experience for parents and children” compared to Temple Street and Crumlin hospitals.

She said that what was really needed was access to the “hot block” area which housed all of the surgical theatres and laboratories, saying it was “the crucial piece to which we need access” as extra time would be needed for the commissioning of surgical and laboratory equipment.

In a statement, BAM said: “The National Children’s Hospital project is now in the final stages of completion and commissioning. Work is taking place simultaneously across several areas of the building, including highly technical and clinical areas that require specialist commissioning work.

“The project continues to be resourced to support the work currently under way, with specialist teams continuing to complete the remaining programme.

“BAM continues to work closely with the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board and CHI to deliver the hospital as quickly and safely as possible for the children of Ireland.”