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05 Sept 2025
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05 Sept 2025
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Members of the Oireachtas Health Committee have been told none of the more than 5,500 rooms at the National Children's Hospital have been completed to the standard expected.
The committee has been hearing from representatives of the development board overseeing the project which, to date, has cost €1.478 billion.
Addressing the committee, David Gunning, the chief officer of The National Paediatric Hospital Development Board said the State is being held like a “hostage” in negotiations with lead contractor Bam.
He accused Bam of under-resourcing the project and failing to deliver on its contractual obligations. “It is the view of the NPHDB that Bam is seeking to implement a strategy to exert pressure on the State to secure additional monies above the contract sum, by whatever means,” he said.
Members of the committee were told that "not one room has been fully completed" to the satisfaction of the Board.
“As of today, not one room has been fully completed in line with the standard and finish as set out in the contract,” said Mr Gunning.
“There are 5,678 clinical spaces in the new hospital and whilst, to date, Bam has offered 3,128 as complete, none were completed to the required standard," he added.
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The committee has been told the expected completion date has been delayed 14 times and that the current completion date, put forward by Bam is June 2025.
Following completion, there will be an approximately six-to-eight month commissioning period before the site is ready to accept children as patients.
Mr Gunning said he had “never seen anything like this” and he told Senator Martin Conway that he and his colleagues are sick of it. "We have been dealing with this day in and day out. Commitments made, commitments missed.”
He said the Board does not have a detailed programme on how Bam plans to execute the last 10 months of the project and that without that detail, he does not have confidence that the project will be complete by next June.
Mr Gunning said the timeline could be secured if the project was appropriately resourced by Bam, but claimed the contractor is “consistently failing to deliver on its planned commitments”.
In particular, he said the contractor continually insists on describing areas within the hospital as finished when they are incomplete.
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