Will the National Children’s Hospital open this year?
The hugely over budget new building was due to be completed in 2020 but was delayed because of the pandemic.
The date was then pushed back to 2022, then again to 2024 and then to the summer of 2025.
Could this be the year that sick children in Ireland are finally treated in the type world-class healthcare facility they deserve?
Speaking on The Hard Shoulder, DCU Procurement Lecturer Paul Davis said he was sceptical it would be ready to treat patients anytime soon.
“We’re supposed to have a commissioning plan,” he said.
“The commissioning plan was supposed to be a six-month commissioning plan.
“So, far that commissioning plan has been based around a substantial completion date and that phrase ‘substantial completion date’ has been used for about 18 months.
“We’ve finally been given one - supposedly June or July this year; our expectation is that it won’t be.
“So, in other words, we’re going to miss that again because we’ve missed it completely.”
The new National Children's Hospital. Picture by: PA Archive/PA ImagesMr David said that “hopefully I’ll be proved wrong” but said six-months is an extremely short period of time to kit out a clinical environment.
“You’re now taking three separate hospital groupings, three sets of staff, you are going to have to migrate those staff over to one new building,” he said.
“I don’t see a recruitment plan in place; they say they have a commissioning plan in place but they estimate they’ve got 38,000 pieces of equipment to commission.
“That hasn’t started because we’re still waiting for a completion date. If it has started, where has it started? What are they doing? What’s the reporting on it?
“Until January this year, we didn’t even have a CEO in place.”
The original cost of the National Children’s Hospital was to be around €980 million in 2017.
However, the final price tag is expected to exceed €2 billion.
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Main image: Construction at the National Children's Hospital. Picture by: PA.
