THE NEW CHILDREN’S Hospital is not on track to be handed over to the State by builders BAM by the end of April, and over 500 staff still need to be recruited in advance of its opening, the health committee has heard. 

David Gunning, the Chief Officer of the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board (NPHDB) told politicians that a meeting held with BAM yesterday confirmed that the hospital won’t be substantially completed by the target handover date of 30 April. 

Gunning said that BAM has delayed handing over the hospital 18 times, and that the target date was 40 months beyond the initial timeline for the project. 

A spokesperson for BAM said that it is not accurate to say that the builder has continuously missed completion dates. 

They added that design changes have been requested which have added additional scope to the project, and that this has caused delay, “rather than any failure of performance”. 

Gunning said that a third-party employer representative is reviewing the latest update from BAM in order to assess its compliance with the builder’s contract with the State. 

After this process takes place, BAM will be asked to give a new target completion date.

In the committee hearing, CHI officials were pressed on whether design changes were a delaying factor. 

Gunning said that there’s been “no material change to the design of the hospital” and “minor changes” have been requested, with only a few requiring structures needing to be ripped out and replaced due to regulatory changes. 

Gunning said that just 3726 rooms out of 5708 in the hospital have been offered to the hospital’s design team for validation, and that, of those, 2854 were found to have met standards. 

He clarified that those 800 rooms that weren’t approved just have “one or two outstanding issues”. 

Sinn Fein’s spokesperson for Health David Cullinane TD said that the Children’s hospital project has been a “disaster from start to finish” that has stemmed from a “fundamentally flawed contract” that was “signed off on by the current Minister for Finance, Simon Harris”. 

CHI CEO Lucy Nugent told the committee that the hospital will provide a digital-first service to children and their families. 

She asked them to picture a hospital where “robots glide quietly down the hallways delivering meals and supplies”, and digital monitoring allows nurses to spend more time at children’s bedsides. 

However, when asked if she believed that the hospital would have adequate staffing levels when it eventually opens, she outlined that CHI will have to recruit, hire, and train over 570 new members of staff – none of whom have yet been contracted. 

She also said that some staff in the existing children’s hospitals have indicated that they do not want to switch to the new hospital, as they are close to retirement. 

Labour’s Marie Sherlock pressed Gunning on whether he believed in the projected handover date that BAM gave in the first place, to which he said he had little confidence in it. 

Gunning once again claimed that the resources BAM has committed to the project is a “significant issue”, which BAM has repeatedly denied and challenged.