Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his question. As we are all aware, the main contractor has now missed its own deadline 14 times. It missed its own deadlines four times this year alone.

Neither the HSE nor the Government has confidence in deadlines that a contractor puts forward when the contractor misses its own deadlines 14 times. Our position and that of the board has been clear, in that the contractor needs to fully resource the project. The board’s view is that the contractor has consistently failed to do so. In my last meeting with the board a few weeks ago, the board’s view was that the contractor had fewer than half the staff on site that were needed. Deputy Cullinane and I go into, as we should, the details around contracts, withheld money and so on, but at a simple level, if any of us paid a builder to build us a wall and the builder put half the number of bricklayers on the job that was agreed, the wall would take longer to build. Much of this issue boils down to that. The contractor has not resourced the project.

I believe it was in March of this year that we were all expecting handover in October or November. The contractor then said it would be in March of next year, then June. The contractor has to fulfil its obligations on this project. A vast amount of commissioning work is being done – I spoke to the chief executive and the chair of the board about the commissioning this morning – to ensure that everything that can be done is done. We need to accelerate the commissioning and move into the hospital before the final completion date. There is commissioning work that could be accelerated.

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