OnoMatopee schreef op 7 december 2025 13:08:
New Children’s Hospital delay pushes opening months beyond deadline
Bam construction comes under pressure from the National Paediatric Hospital
Jennifer Bray, Political Editor
Health officials have been told that construction experts believe the hospital will not be finished until April next year, which would make a summer opening impossible and could push the opening to the following year.
It emerged last week that the planned November 2025 completion of the hospital has been delayed again, with the project missing its 16th deadline last month, but no timelines were provided for the new finish date.
National Children's Hospital in Dublin 8, Ireland.
A health service source said that a date for access to begin the fit-out of the building was not likely to be earlier than February
The Sunday Times has learnt, however, that Kroll, an expert adviser on the project, carried out an assessment on the progress on the site, and this indicated a finish date of next March or April.
Furthermore, a plan to give Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) early access to the hospital at the end of this month is now also in doubt. A health service source said that a more likely date for early access — which is needed to begin the fit-out of the building — was February next year.
If the building is finished in April, CHI then needs a nine-month commissioning period for thousands of pieces of equipment and IT infrastructure. This would mean the hospital would not be able to open until January 2027.There are intensive efforts ongoing to speed up CHI’s early access to the site. The organisation carried out a risk analysis to determine whether it might be possible to move sick children from the existing children’s hospitals on to the new site in St James’s Hospital during the winter months of late 2026 or early 2027. Officials had previously warned against such a move due to clinical risk. That analysis has been completed, and sources have said that because of the extreme public and political pressure, every effort will be made to open the hospital no matter what time of year it is.
This would be complicated, however, by high levels of flu, as is the case now in hospitals around the country.
A government source said it would be “hugely disappointing” if CHI could not get access later this month, and said that pressure was being put on BAM, the construction company, by the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board (NPHDB), which oversees the running of the project.
“We cannot have a situation, though, where random rooms are being offered in a chequerboard-type way — we need whole floors,” the insider added.
HSE officials discussed the latest delays to the finish of the hospitals in a meeting in September, when they were told that Kroll had provided an updated assessment based on site progress, which indicated a March or April 2026 date for substantial completion. Two sources confirmed this week that this was now the finish date that all parties were working towards.
A spokeswoman for the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board said that its “immediate priority is to get additional early access for Children’s Health Ireland as soon as possible”.
“BAM’s focus should be on enabling this phased, methodical additional early access to completed parts of the building as soon as possible for Children’s Health Ireland,” she added, “so it can begin loading and commissioning medical equipment ahead of integration with the new digital building and the new electronic health record system, the digital operating platform for the NCHI.
“On October 29, 2025, BAM informed the NPHDB that it would provide the first phase of early access … on December 3, 2025. The latest date BAM has advised for providing the first phase of early access is later in December 2025. The NPHDB is continuing to do everything in its power to compel BAM to conclude its work and fulfil its contractual responsibilities.”
The spokeswoman said a “realistic date of substantial completion is within the gift of the main contractor, BAM, to commit to and deliver on.”
BAM said it remained “fully committed to delivering this project to the highest standards, working closely with all stakeholders to actively manage the challenges involved and to secure the earliest possible opening date for the children of Ireland”.
tot zover het "nieuws" uit Dublin voor dit weekend.
www.thetimes.com/world/ireland-world/...