The health minister has said a similar contract underpinning the long-delayed construction of the National Children\u2019s Hospital would not be used again.<\/p>\n
Jennifer Carroll MacNeill said that she hoped that the hospital could accept patients from December this year if the hospital construction was completed by April.<\/p>\n
She made the comments to the Oireachtas health committee on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The deadline for the completion of the major infrastructure project has been pushed back over a dozen times and costs have ballooned from a planned \u20ac650 million to an expected \u20ac2.2 billion.<\/p>\n
After the completion of construction by main contractor BAM, the hospital will also require a commission period of between six and nine months to install healthcare machines, for example, before it becomes operational.<\/p>\n
Asked by committee chairman Padraig Rice whether she was confident the April 30th deadline would be met by the main contractor BAM, Carroll MacNeill said \u201cthat\u2019s up to BAM\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the hospital is handed over at the end of April, and if everything goes well with the commissioning period, and we really have worked hard to try to make that as tight as possible, then that would be my expectation (that patients would be in the hospital by December).\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are you doing to ensure the BAM meets its obligation to deliver that hospital?\u201d Rice asked.<\/p>\n
Carroll MacNeill said: \u201cWhat do you believe is within my power to do, chair, what are the procedural tools that are available to me?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI have challenged BAM, as has my predecessor, both privately, in the media, in public, by way of letter, by way of update to you, to provide clear, clear evidence as to what needs to happen for them to finish it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked by Rice if this meant the hospital contract was flawed, the minister said: \u201cI would not sign\u2026 I would not\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the current projects that we are moving forward, we would not have a similar contractual structure, and I think we will see that in respect of the National Maternity Hospital and other major projects that we will be advancing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked if the contract was \u201cfundamentally flawed\u201d, she said: \u201cWe would not take that step again.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe contractual structure is not one we would approach again, is not one we would adopt again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier, Carroll MacNeill told the committee that the Department of Health was trying to do more with the \u20ac27.35 billion in funding it had received for healthcare spending.<\/p>\n
She said Ireland was experience a growth in demand for health services and said there was a variable performance between regions on how it responded to a spike in trolley numbers.<\/p>\n
She said there were 15 injury units in the country and four more would be opened this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had a very tight financial performance in 2025 that is different to what we\u2019ve experienced before,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are driving hard.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do have an increase in budget, but we are really driving hard to do more with what we already have, with what the state has already invested.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The health minister has said a similar contract underpinning the long-delayed construction of the National Children\u2019s Hospital would…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[103,397,396,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-292669","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-healthcare","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}