Delay of children’s hospital would ‘impose considerable additional costs’, Minister warns
The continued delay to the completion of the national children’s hospital would “impose considerable additional costs on the State”, the Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill warned the contractor earlier this year. The construction of the facility on the St James’s Hospital site in Dublin began in 2016 and was scheduled to be completed by the end of 2022, but has faced numerous delays. The project has been marked by ballooning costs – from €987 million to €2.24 billion – with an increasingly fractious relationship between the builders, Bam, and the board overseeing the project, the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board (NPHDB). In March, MacNeill wrote to Henk Rottinghuis, chairman of the Royal Bam group, the parent company of Bam Ireland, criticising the resources and progress on the project. At that point the hospital was due for substantial completion by April 30th. It has still not reached this stage more than five months later. “Any delay by BAM Ireland in handing over the NCHI beyond the 30 April target is untenable and would significantly disrupt downstream mobilisation and commissioning activities by Children’s Health Ireland (CHI),” her letter, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, said. “This is not a matter of mere inconvenience: such delays would impose considerable additional costs on the State, defer the commencement of critical clinical services in the new hospital, and prolong the elevated clinical risks to patients that the new facility is expressly designed to mitigate.” A spokesman for the Department of Health said the main cause of delay has been “Bam’s failure to adequately manage and resource the project and maintain effective quality assurance processes in the delivery of the works”. “There is no additional capital budget requirement and the revised budget of 2024 includes appropriate contingency to address legitimate claims on a project of this scale and complexity,” he said. Complaints about doctors to the Medical Council were up 12% in 2025 “However, the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board continues to robustly defend all claims considered to be without merit to protect the interests of the State.” The spokesman said the additional costs arising from the delays are “primarily opportunity costs”. “Delays to the completion of the NCHI has an opportunity cost to the healthcare service beyond financial concerns,” the spokesman said. “The delays defer the clinical, operational and patient-centred benefits associated with the transition to a modern healthcare facility and prolong reliance on legacy infrastructure that is increasingly incapable of supporting the current requirements of our paediatric services.” The spokesman said the delay to substantial completion has also delayed the operational commissioning phase. “In order to reduce costs as much as possible, CHI has taken steps to streamline its commissioning team until such a time as the building is ready to be handed over,” he said. “This reduction in the commissioning team includes releasing staff temporarily to other work within CHI and the Health Service Executive, holding vacancies, and building up the knowledge pool within the organisation so high-cost external specialists can be reduced.” What is really going on in the Irish housing market? The numbers don’t add up A spokesman for Bam said the project is in the “final stages of commissioning and certification”. “The programme continues to be, and has always been, sufficiently resourced,” the spokesman said, adding that given the “late stage” of work, it is “entirely normal that there are fewer personnel on site”. “BAM continues to work closely with the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board and Children’s Health Ireland to deliver the hospital as quickly and safely as possible for the children of Ireland,” he said.