Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish the Chair and our colleagues a good morning. I welcome the opportunity to provide an update on the completion of the new children's hospital. I am joined by Fiona Ross, Derek Tierney, Tracey Conroy; and Patrick Lynch.

We are all here today with a single focus, which is to see the new children's hospital completed and open and supporting the delivery of the best care possible to children across the island as soon as possible. Many colleagues have visited the site and been impressed by the scale of the project. The hospital will have 473 beds, including 300 inpatient en suite single rooms, each with a dedicated bed for a parent. It will have 60 critical care beds, 18 of which are for the establishment of a new neonatal intensive care unit. It will have 20 much-needed dedicated child and adolescent mental health beds, 22 operating theatres, specialist procedural rooms, 93 day beds and a hospital school and third level education centre. It will be Ireland's first fully digital public hospital. It will undoubtedly be a unique and special environment befitting our exceptional paediatric doctors, nurses, health and social care professionals and all of those who dedicate their lives to caring for our sickest children. Most importantly, it will be a unique and special environment befitting the children of Ireland and will make sure that they can get access to world-class care.

We are all aware of the challenges the project has faced. In the past two weeks, the committee was joined by David Gunning, chief executive of the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board, and Phelim Devine, project director, who provided it with a comprehensive update. Colleagues will be aware that I recently met with the hospital development board to discuss challenges with the main contractor. As a result of that meeting, I wrote to the Taoiseach and party leaders in the interests of providing an update. After that, I met with Royal BAM, the parent company of BAM Ireland, to make the Government's position very clear. At the meeting, which was held last week, I also sought a commitment from Royal BAM to provide early access for the commissioning team from Children's Health Ireland, CHI. This is to expedite operational commissioning activities.

Alongside the construction of the new hospital, there is a significant programme of work to prepare for its opening. This is the new children's hospital programme, which is overseen by the CHI board, and is essentially the commissioning. It involves the ongoing integration of hospitals and workforces, which is under way, the commissioning process for the new children's hospital, which is at an advanced stage, and the implementation of the new digital or electronic health records system, which is also at an advanced stage with the design and configuration phase concluded. There is a dedicated transformation director in CHI. This director has responsibility for the children's hospital programme. The programme is supported by commissioning experts Newpark Healthcare, which has commissioned 24 hospitals around the world.

Under the revised governance structures approved by Government in November 2021, the national oversight group oversees and monitors the progress of the children's hospital project and programme. The group, which is chaired by my Secretary General, Robert Watt, is informed by the lead director, Mr. Patrick Lynch, who engages continually with both the national paediatric hospital development board and CHI.

As part of the oversight measures and to enable a smooth transition to the new hospital, my Department and the HSE requested an expert external review of CHI's operational readiness to commission and commence operations at the new children's hospital. This represented important due diligence. The operational readiness review was led by an international expert with extensive clinical and change management experience. After this, an implementation plan informed by the recommendations of the review was drafted by the HSE and CHI. The implementation plan was submitted to the national oversight group, which reviewed and accepted it. CHI's progress against the implementation plan is being monitored closely by the lead director with progress reported to the national oversight group, which is chaired by my Department's Secretary General.

The Government is committed to seeing the new children's hospital open for the treatment of the children of this island as soon as possible. On 2 October, BAM submitted an updated programme to the board confirming that the date on which it believes it can achieve substantial completion of the hospital is June 2025. That programme must be subject to scrutiny and review by the independent contract administrator, the employer's representative, to determine its contractual compliance and validity. We all want to see this much-needed and much-anticipated hospital open for children, for their families and for our dedicated healthcare professionals without further delay.