THE opening of the National Children’s Hospital has been postponed once again, marking the 16th delay since construction began in 2016.
The project, originally estimated at €987m, has now ballooned to €2.2bn, with the finish line pushed into 2026.
Located at the St James’s Hospital campus in Dublin, the hospital’s construction has been marred by protracted disagreements, spiralling costs and a deteriorating relationship between the project’s main contractor, BAM, and the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board (NPHDB).
A recent letter from NPHDB chief officer David Gunning to the Public Accounts Committee revealed a series of deepening concerns, including ongoing disputes with BAM over €880m in additional claims.
As part of the board’s response, over €1.14m in payments to the contractor have been withheld for recent months due to alleged failures to meet contractual obligations.
Gunning criticised BAM for not adequately staffing the site, citing a drop in workforce numbers from 900 last December to fewer than 500 in recent months.
He stated that none of the 2,140 rooms offered for inspection by BAM had passed the final stage of compliance review.
The board is currently engaged in four separate legal proceedings relating to BAM’s financial demands, involving bond-backed payments totalling €145m.
While BAM has claimed that the hospital is “more than 99% complete”, both the NPHDB and Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill have rejected these assertions, according to the Irish Independent.
The minister described BAM’s claims of substantial completion as “not credible” and attributed the primary cause of delays to the contractor’s ongoing underperformance.
Despite receiving limited early access to parts of the facility for commissioning preparations, Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) is still awaiting full handover.
The NPHDB insists that many of BAM’s recently cited changes are minor and have little bearing on the core construction tasks that remain incomplete.
Senator Martin Conway previously condemned the lack of transparency surrounding the project, describing the absence of clear updates as “nothing short of disgraceful.”