Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 16 June 2022

Public Accounts Committee

National Paediatric Hospital Development Board: Financial Statements 2020

9:30 am

Mr. Phelim Devine:

I can provide the figures now. There were three projects as part of that procurement. There was the outpatient and urgent care centre at Connolly, the outpatient and emergency care centre at Tallaght, and we also provided a new crèche, administration and changing facilities for Tallaght University Hospital. The outturn cost of the whole project, including design team fees and aspergillus prevention, was €82.1 million, including VAT, as compared with the budget of €76.4 million, including VAT. The latter figure is included in the €1.433 billion, so the extra over-cost of €5.7 million, including VAT, is coming from our contingency within the €1.433 billion Government approval. The reason it went over budget was associated with additional investment in the Tallaght University Hospital campus in terms of infrastructure such as new transformers, generators and chillers. There were a lot of new items. There were unmapped services. I refer to transfers. We procured all the security and nurse call systems for those two centres as part of the children's hospital to make sure that we had full alignment for staff and for use of operation, so that got transferred from the national children's hospital back into the satellite centres. We also had a certain amount of inflation. We had costs associated with prolongation, that is, delay costs.