HEALTH MINISTER STEPHEN Donnelly has said his “focus” is on getting the National Children’s Hospital open next year and that BAM have “committed” to a June 2025 completion date.
The National Children’s Hospital, which is now years overdue, has cost the state €2.2 billion to date.
It had previously been marked for completion in 2020 with a budget of €650 million.
The Board overseeing the hospital’s development last month accused BAM, the construction company behind the project, of having a “complete disregard for sick children”.
Speaking on RTÉ’s This Week, Donnelly said he met with the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board recently after BAM signalled that the deadline for completion had moved to June 2025.
Following this, Donnelly meet last week with the global chief executive of BAM for what he described as a “pretty open and frank discussion”.
“On the back of that, BAM are engaging with the development board so that the Government can be presented with a work program with a project timeline that both parties believe and that BAM will stand over,” said Donnelly.
Donnelly added that BAM has to put more staff on site to ensure the June deadline is met.
“They have committed to the June deadline,” said Donnelly.
“My view is that they simply have not had enough workers on site, and there’s lots of complexity, but at its core, there haven’t been enough people on site finishing off this hospital.
“I made that very clear to the chief executive, that that is one of the core things we want to see, is we want to see greater resourcing on site.”
BAM last month told The Journal that the project is currently 93% complete and that it has “always been fully resourced”.
Donnelly also said that BAM’s global chief executive “stood over the deadline” and Donnely said this deadline must be met.
The Health Minister added that he requested to met the global chief executive rather than “just BAM UK and Ireland” to emphasise this point.
Donnelly said that “the other thing we’re looking to do is accelerate the commissioning work”.
“The plan had been that only when we took the keys from the contractor would the commissioning teams begin to go in,” said Donnelly.
“What we agreed last week was that the commissioning teams would begin to go in much earlier.
“What I’d like to see is an accelerated process of this commissioning, which is basically the time from when we take over the building to the time you can start bringing children into it.”
The HSE was allocated €1.5 billion during the summer as well as a further €1.2 billion for next year to maintain existing levels of service.
However, Donnelly today said it’s “likely the HSE will run a little over that”.
He said this is because the HSE is “treating more people in emergency departments, getting the waiting list down further, with more outpatient appointments, and more surgeries”.
Donnelly wouldn’t put a figure on how much the run over will be but said the HSE is on a “stable financial footing” due to an additional €3 billion allocation for health in Budget 2025.
In all, a record €25.8 billion budget was allocated to health services in Budget 2025.
This includes €335 million for additional new measures and €0.9 billion of funding for measures that were initially introduced as one-off measures during the COVID-19 pandemic and have now been made permanent.
“There is a lot of money going into business as usual, let’s call it,” said Donnelly, “but it’s a growing population, an aging population, and €335 million is a lot of money.”
The new measures include free Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), however women will still have to pay for their GP visit and dispensing fee to the pharmacist.
HRT is free for holders of medical cards but otherwise can cost in the region of €30 to €70 a month.
And while Donnelly said he is “the first to accept that there are teams in some of our hospitals and community organisations that are too stretched,” he added that “between now and the end of next year, the HSE is funded to increase the workforce by over 6000 more staff”.
He also said there has been an “unprecedented increase in the number of healthcare workers over the past four year”.
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