Construction completion date pushed back to February next year, Oireachtas committee hears It will be August 2025 at the earliest before the National Children’s Hospital will admit its first patient, an Oireachtas committee has been told. In a statement to the Public Accounts Committee, chief officer of the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board (NPHDB) David Gunning revealed that contractors BAM told him that the hospital’s construction will not be complete until February 2025. With at least six months required from completion to prepare the hospital for opening, it is now expected that the site will not open to patients until August next year at the earliest.
Under questioning, Mr Gunning refused to say if he can be certain that the new date of completion will be met. “We don’t have the detail to support the date,” he admitted to the committee. In a statement, the Comptroller and Auditor General, Seamus McCarthy, outlined that the revised budget for the hospital is now €1.
88 billion, an increase of €450 million on the budget allocated to the project in 2019. Including additional resourcing, as well as €360 million required for the integration and transition of services to the hospital, in February the Government approved an overall budget for the project of €2.24 billion.
Mr Gunning said that the delay to construction is the ‘primary driver’ for the increased costs. He stated that a September 2023 submission by BAM – which then pushed the com.
