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OCTOBER 2024 IS the latest completion date for the new National Children’s Hospital, according to the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board (NPHDB).
The board is set to appear before the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee (PAC) tomorrow, when it will state that “the stated substantial completion date in this latest programme is 29 October 2024″.
“We are in constant engagement with BAM to ensure that the October 2024 substantial completion is achieved. All our efforts are focused on getting certainty on this date,” the chief officer of the NPHDB, David Gunning, states in his opening statement.
However, the statement concludes by stating that the completion date of the building phase becomes the start date of an “operational commissioning phase”, leaving a question mark over when the hospital will actually be up-and-running.
The Irish Independent reported earlier today that it could take at least six months to make the facility operational, meaning the hospital would not be fully open until April 2025 at the earliest.
Questioned by The Journal about the possible timeline delay, Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe said it is a “matter I’m looking to clarify myself”.
When asked about the opening timeline, Tánaiste Micheál Martin said today:
“My view is the hospital is very well advanced, we want to complete it as quickly as possible. and in the best manner possible in terms of commissioning of equipment and so on. I had a different timeline yesterday to the early 2025 timeline but it’s a matter of months between the two timelines.”
When put to the minister that the opening might be pushed out, he said: “I think we have to be very conscious that in all the contractual talks that have been going on, the public commentary on timelines creates perhaps wrong pressures.
“This has to be done properly in terms of value for money for the citizen. It has to get done property in terms of the quality of the building, which is superb.
“And we just had to get it done. Because I think in the fullness of time, when it is completely commissioned it will be I think a world class facility.”
Martin said there has been huge challenges between those who were responsible for commissioning the hospital and those who have the contract to deliver the hospital.
To date, the total amount spent by the NPHDB (as of 30 September 2023) is €1,361,703,344, according to the opening statement to the PAC.
The board states this leaves €71 million remaining in the current overall capital
budget of €1.433 billion.
“Work on the hospital is 92% complete (as at the end of September 2023),” said the board.
Committee members will be told tomorrow that there are a number of contract provisions that were not included as part of the capital approval, such as construction inflation in excess of 4%, changes in scope resulting from healthcare policy changes; statutory changes and Covid-19, all of which have added cost to the project.
The building is well advanced but there is still some way to go to substantial completion, the board states, stating that typically, in a building of this size and scale, the last 10% is the slowest to complete.
The committee will be told tomorrow that the contractor BAM continues to submit large volumes of claims.
2,379 claims have been raised up to the end of September 2023. The substantiated value as claimed by BAM is €769 million. Of these, 1,610 claims of €16.75 million and a further €2.1 million has been agreed through the dispute management process.
This additional €18.85 million is circa 2% of the overall contract value, the committee will hear.
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Can’t wait for the inevitable (cash-grab) tribunal into this fiasco is started, with zero accountability to follow.
Whenever it opens the nightmare of access and parking will begin, we have been attending St James Hosp for some weeks now and parking is just mental, I dread to think when the children’s Hosp opens the chaos that will follow.
@Eileen Kelly: and the green party will have a 10 euro charge to drive into the city by then
New parking: 575 will be paying visitor Spaces, 100 spaces will be CHI Social Care Guest Spaces and 319 spaces will be for Staff Parking.
@Ivan Genockey: $20
Rumour has it the children’s hospital will open in October 2054 and closed in 2056 due to being outdated
@Pat Barden: when tallaght hospital opened decades after the plans were drawn up, bed sizes had increased, and the doors needed to be resized. Cant wait to see the snag list on this new white elephant with potential costs of 2.4 billion being floated.
Well done to our Irish writers and our President Mr Higgins for speaking out against the slaughter of innocent lives in Palestine. Please continue to force your opposition to this sensless taking of life.
Anyone in the privelaged position of having access to public persuasion has a moral duty to speak out against this mass murder and not to remain silent.
The thoughts of a sick mind. Go get the help you obviously need.
@Mary Looners: How about the thousands of Palestinians murdered by the terrorist forces of Israel…The thousands murdered by the same Israeli terrorist forces in the refugee camps in Lebanon…Israel a country from lines drawn in the sand by the murderous British empire.
@Dissasociated Follower: Israel is looking for the Final Solution in Gaza over the next few weeks. The final dispersal of the indigenous Palestinian population into Egypt. Speak out against this genocide!
Well I for one am shocked. Shocked I tell you
they need to find a buyer first before they open it.sell it for about 120 million and state “a great day for Ireland”. that’s how these things usually work anyway.
First child patients will be adults by the time it’s open
Why did they not build that out near the M50 on a big site with plenty of parking for everyone. Easy to get to. Brought my elderly father up from Waterford to St James for a scan last week. A major hospital without any parking. Even the set down area was full.
The money pit. They keep shovelling it in…
Bad enough concerning the Children’s Hospital…The event centre in Cork again made a few headlines again a few weeks ago… It’s like Bart Simpson..Are we there yet…Photo in newspaper showed Enda Kenny, Coveney and the future deputy leader of FG Michael Martin. Kenny has gone trainspotting…People looking for Coveney as he has disappeared.. Martin can’t remember the photo… like when he stated there was no bank bailout..Jesus his memory is shot through…As for the event centre…as John Wayne would say ..Until hell freezes over… And BAM riding off into the Sunset
Value for Money for the Citizen. That’s a joke if ever I head one. Beginning to sound like a Communist State.
@Owen Mc: One thing about a communist state ..The incompetent politicians who thought this farce up..Would be up against a wall…And rightly so.
Just before the next General Election. Bronze plaques will be insitu.
Tbf it looks fabulous.
Yep. It’s its only redeeming feature so far
Lol
And it’s not even April’s fools day. How many more OT will have to be refitted out due to incompetence. This hospital will never have enough people to work there to make it a safe place for children.
Hopefully this will open soon and I really hope our children do not have to face the horrors of war that is being faced by so many across the world. Imagine if the hospital was hit by a misfired missile from a local terrorist gang and killed hundreds of its own people. Evidence is mounting and thousands here in Ireland including our politicians have been screaming that is was Israel. Nobody will apologise and try hold the right people accountable. Hatred of the people of Israel will continue and openly, because it’s acceptable. Oh and a tip to those people who have posters saying ‘queers for Palestine’ please please make your way to gaze and hold up those posters, they will just love you.
@Chris Thaunton: Could you elaborate on your statement “evidence is mounting”. If you have evidence as to who perpetrated this dispicable act of terror on a hospital packed with injured people, would you kindly share it with the group please.
@Chris Thaunton: I would like to know if you think that blowing children to smitherings in their hospital beds is a more effective and moral way of exterminating children than beheading because the people in the middle east who kill children indiscriminately can’t seem to make their minds up as to the most acceptable way to destroy a child.
You seem to be determinably accepting of the statements made by the Isreali forces on who carried out this act of terror. I worry that you may loose your ability to question obdjectively every forcibly applied statement or convincing claim that beats itself upon your eardrum. I fear that you may be led down the path of perpetual propoganda.
@Chris Thaunton: did you have to bring Israel into this. Very few irish people give a dam about Israel.
@Joe Kelly: Hi Joe, that is blatantly obvious.
@Dissasociated Follower: Hi there, yes, the mounting evidence is even now being transmitted to us on our very own state media. If they are willing to show it, that says a hell of a lot. Unfortunately the crime scene has been tampered with, to conceal evidence no doubt. There also an intercepted voice conversation that adds to the evidence. Available online from your trusted sources. I love group therapy.
@Chris Thaunton: Thanks Chris. I’ll check it out and if I can allow myself to be convinced by the evidence you mention I’ll revert back.
I’m sure though that long after our bones have been fossilised the truth will come out.
Sure it will. Sure its only taxpayers money anyway.
That would be the 30th of September so
This is worse than the paul vi snek hall architecture from the Vatican article above. Eye of the divil as opposed to Our Lady’s.. Blow it up, and redo it without the all seeing eye
Was this project even put up for bid or was it just all day work.
have your say