Impossible to determine final costs of National Children’s Hospital says health minister Stephen Donnelly

Health Minister Stephen Donnelly has insisted that “nobody could accurately” put a figure on the final cost of the new children’s hospital and accused Sinn Fein of being used as “pawns” to justify overspend.

Donnelly also said it will be important for the Government to be allowed to consider past performance of contractors when awarding future high-profile infrastructure projects.

The plan to build the paediatric hospital in Dublin has been beset by controversy in recent years over how much it will cost and the repeated delays to when it will be in operation.

Last week, it emerged the planned handover date from the contractor BAM is to be pushed back from March next year to May, while the cost of the hospital is spiralling.

Representatives from the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board (NPHDB), appointed in 2013 to design and build the hospital, revealed this week that just 27 rooms had been completed when 3,000 should have been completed by now.

An Oireachtas committee was also told that costs for the hospital could top two billion euros.

Speaking to reporters at the opening of the Ballyboden Primary Care Centre in Dublin 16 on Friday, Donnelly said the NPHDB needed to be supported in challenging claims from BAM to deliver the hospital “for an appropriate amount of money”.

He said BAM had made claims worth “many hundreds of millions” of euros but only about 2% of the claims have been found in favour of the contractor so far.

Donnelly acknowledged there are others which have not yet been adjudicated on.

He said it was not possible to estimate how those claims would be adjudicated and whether they would be escalated to the courts.

The minister said the Government was supporting the board in its engagement with BAM for what he described as “a world-class children’s hospital”.

Earlier this week, chief officer of the NPHDB David Gunning said that of the €1.433 billion in expenditure that had been approved for the construction of the hospital, to date €1.325 billion has been spent.

He said that 2,175 claims have been raised by the contractor BAM up until the end of June this year, worth an estimated €756 million.

A total of 1,478 claims had been decided, at a value of €14 million, and worth less than 2% of the overall contract value.

Asked if he knew what the final figure for the hospital would be, Donnelly said: “It would be very unhelpful for me or the Taoiseach or the Tanaiste to say: ‘Look, we believe the final agreement might be in the following area’, because that will immediately empower certain parties to bid for more money.”

Sinn Fein has also sought an estimate for the final cost of the project.

The Health Minister accused the opposition party of “trying to make a story out of something that we have all fully understood since 2018”.

Donnelly said: “I think Sinn Fein may inadvertently – I don’t believe they’re doing it on purpose – be being used as pawns to justify some of the delays and some of the overspend.”

He said Sinn Fein’s finance spokesperson had claimed that young people were emigrating over the matter.

During Leaders’ Questions on Tuesday, Pearse Doherty said the cost overrun at the children’s hospital and the payments scandal at RTÉ were examples of a “broken culture” fostered by Fianna Fail and Fine Gael governments which he said led to a housing crisis, a healthcare service “creaking at the seams”, and youth emigration.

He said: “The Taoiseach can shake his head all he wants but young people are making the decision to leave because of this type of culture.

“They want change. They want better for themselves, their family and the children of this State. They want the children’s hospital built.”

On Friday, Donnelly criticised the remarks and added: “This is just politics.”

Asked if he would be comfortable with BAM receiving other high-profile Government contracts, Donnelly said it will be important to allow the State to consider “previous performance” in the awarding of future large-scale infrastructure contracts.

The minister said he was making this comment without prejudice to any contractor doing any piece of work.

“But if any of us were asking someone to build an extension, build a conservatory or build a wall, you would look to the reputation of the previous performance of that builder before hiring them in.

“It should be no different for the State.”

Donnelly said the current situation was similar to when he was in opposition in 2018 and 2019.

He said: “We knew then that the final cost was going to be in excess of €1.433 billion.

“We knew that there was a difficult relationship between the board and between the contractor and we knew that the board’s view was that the project should be moving at a faster pace.”

Donnelly said that since then Covid-19 “slowed everything down” and the war in Ukraine caused a “huge increase in building costs”.