Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 5 October 2022
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health
Construction of the National Children’s Hospital: Discussion
Mr. David Gunning:
That is a very good question. Deputy Lahart may remember that we have provided scenarios and updates to our stakeholders, formerly shareholders, right back to January 2021. We have been engaged in a very intensive process of continuing to update, refine and work to try to quantify and scrutinise each and every one of those cost elements. We are getting to the point where we are able to call it, as Deputy Lahart says we will have been asked to do. I have not had a discussion with the Secretary General for some time. Our day-to-day activities within the development board are with the stakeholders - the people who are here beside us. We are the team that is working this cost forecast for this project through to substantial completion.
Going back to my public company days, the key issues in any project are cost, scope and timeline. They are all related. We have the scope nailed down. We are attempting to nail down the timeline, but we have had some movement in the timeline, mostly for reasons outside of the contractors' control in terms of the headwinds they have faced. We are trying to tie down these variables and once we do that, we can give a very definitive picture in terms of the potential costs for this project, within a reasonable plus or minus. We are approaching that point. We are not there yet but we are arriving at that point. That dialogue is very intensive between us at the moment.
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