Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to raise these issues with the Taoiseach. As the Cathaoirleach of the Committee of Public Accounts, one of the issues that we have been trying to scrutinise and monitor is the national children's hospital and the progress of the construction work. There is no doubt that it is needed. There is no dispute about that. It is a badly needed project. Significant issues have arisen and we have tracked them carefully over the last three years. It has not been an easy one to follow because of the dearth of information coming to the Committee of Public Accounts. A report was commissioned by the Department but we never got sight of it. We were told we would get sight of it but we did not even get to see it in committee. What we do know at this stage is that the design team fees are ratcheting up. They are significant. We have figures up to 2020 and we have estimates of figures since then. We do not have a completion date, as that keeps moving. We do not have final costings. I do not expect the Taoiseach to have them because of construction inflation, but there should be a range at this point. We are in a large project but there is no range or ballpark figure of what is involved. There is no compliant programme of works from the contractor, BAM. The Minister for Health referred to this in recent days as a breach of contract. There are more than 2,000 claims from the company for extra cash. I visited the site and I understand that there will be claims because there will be modifications as this large complicated project proceeds. It is a 350-bed hospital; we are not building half of New York or anything like that. BAM was served with a stop notice in regard to the latest issue concerning theatres. It appears that has since been countermanded. The consultants that were commissioned by Children's Health Ireland, which is the body that will be charged with running this hospital, stated that the hospital would fail the validation and that it would not be fit to bring into use unless this issue with the theatres is resolved. The question is what happens in that case. Correspondence the committee received this morning, which has only just reached me, is that BAM has been instructed to review the impact of moving the grilles in the ventilation units in the 11 theatres. To date, BAM has not offered any of the operating theatres as being complete for inspection and commissioning by the design team. It is stated that the cost implications will be determined as part of this process and will be proportionate to the scale of the issues. That is fair enough. That is a general statement. When taken together, we are looking at a project that has stumbled and where there have been huge difficulties and disputes. I have only just touched on some of them. Hundreds of issues have arisen. Could the Taoiseach respond from the point of view of the Government on what we can do to get a handle on this?