Taoiseach Leo Varadkar doubled down to defend costs and deadlines for the National Children’s Hospital amid reports that he had suffered further setbacks, reports Breaking News.
Sinn Féin TD David Cullinane said the information he had received indicated that half of the multimillion-dollar hospital’s 22 operating rooms had “major general faults” that could cost tens of thousands of euros to fix and delay the project by 12 months.
He said he got the information from a source “at the heart” of the hospital project.
The hospital – which would be the world’s most expensive hospital when completed – was due to be completed in March 2024, with the opening scheduled for the second half of next year.
Raising the issue on Tuesday in Leaders’ Questions, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said the hospital project was “mismanaged from the start”, reports RTE.
She continued with a quote from the report: “If the present approach is not corrected, the systems will fail the final validation and it will not be fit to be taken into use. Indeed, these independent experts express huge disappointment that no action had been taken since the major generic faults had been brought to the attention of the board months and months earlier,” reports Breaking News.
Mr Varadkar responded by pressing the Sinn Féin leader to reveal the source of the information and questioning the motivations of those who raised the issue.
Ms Macdonald responded by asking for a “more fulsome and a less ridiculous, frankly, answer” when asked if the rooms failed a validation test conducted in March.
The NPHDB told that the main concern is that BAM has yet to submit a work program for the last 20 percent of the hospital, which ends in February 2023, with BAM having submitted 2,122 applications. Project until May 2023.
Plans to build a “state of the art” pediatric hospital have been mired in controversy in recent years over where it will be built, how much it will cost and when it will open, reports Breaking News.
The cost of building the hospital rose from hundreds of millions of euros 10 years ago to the 1.4 billion euros approved by the government in 2018.
The government has acknowledged that the final cost will be higher than that figure, and has cited outstanding claims by hospital developers as the reason for not disclosing the latest cost estimates.
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