{"id":28021,"date":"2025-08-28T04:55:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T04:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/28021\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T04:55:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T04:55:10","slug":"national-childrens-hospital-developer-bams-claims-not-credible-says-minister-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/28021\/","title":{"rendered":"National children\u2019s hospital developer BAM\u2019s claims \u2018not credible\u2019, says Minister \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Minister for Health has accused the builders of the overdue and over-budget national children\u2019s hospital<\/a> of making \u201cnot credible\u201d claims that large parts of the hospital have been ready since July. <\/p>\n

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill<\/a> and construction company BAM<\/a> had a public exchange of words on Wednesday, with each side criticising the other\u2019s remarks. <\/p>\n

Ms Carroll MacNeill had told reporters on Wednesday morning that she had concerns about BAM\u2019s ability to meet its own work programme and claimed <\/p>\n

she had evidence that there \u201chaven\u2019t been enough contractors on site\u201d and that BAM was not drawing down the maximum amount of funding available each month to get the hospital ready to be handed over to Children\u2019s Health Ireland<\/a> at the end of September. The first paediatric patients had been expected to be treated in the hospital by June 2026. <\/p>\n

Ms Carroll MacNeill said the State had made \u20ac10 million a month available for contractors and subcontractors, but BAM was drawing down only between \u20ac2.8 million to \u20ac3 million each month.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis demonstrates that BAM have not put the contractors in to deliver the hospital according to their commitments. They must meet their commitments, this is their timeline,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

In response to those comments, BAM issued a statement which said it was disappointed by the Minister\u2019s remarks. <\/p>\n

It said the hospital project was more than 99 per cent complete, and that large areas of the hospital have been finished since early July and offered to the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board (NPHDB).<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018Simple and straightforward\u2019: The \u20ac4,500 naming of the National Children\u2019s Hospital IrelandOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Ms Carroll MacNeill then issued another statement on Wednesday evening, which again challenged BAM\u2019s account. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not credible for BAM to suggest that \u2018large areas of the hospital have been completed since early July and offered to the NPHDB for early access,\u2019\u201d Ms Carroll MacNeill said. <\/p>\n

She said the NPHDB had said that many of the rooms offered to it \u201cstill have open snags and that in reality only c.800 of these rooms are satisfactory ie less than 15 per cent of the overall number of rooms\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cCritically, many of those rooms were \u2018chequerboarded\u2019 throughout floors and areas of the hospital rather than being offered in a zoned, consistent or logical manner. What is needed is whole zones or blocks of rooms, from the ground floor up to the sixth floor, in order to gain and benefit from meaningful additional early access for Children\u2019s Health Ireland,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

The Minister also said it was \u201cnot credible\u201d for BAM to claim that ongoing design changes are impacting the completion of the hospital. \u201cEspecially given the fact that BAM is claiming that the project is 99 per cent complete. It is BAM\u2019s responsibility to get its final 1 per cent done,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Minister for Health has accused the builders of the overdue and over-budget national children\u2019s hospital of making…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[22644,9,10,45,18572,11331,18,13,14,6,19,17,5002,11,12,15,16,2272,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-28021","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-bam","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-children-s-health-ireland-chi","12":"tag-dublin-1","13":"tag-dublin-8","14":"tag-eire","15":"tag-featured-news","16":"tag-featurednews","17":"tag-headlines","18":"tag-ie","19":"tag-ireland","20":"tag-jennifer-carroll-macneill","21":"tag-latest-news","22":"tag-latestnews","23":"tag-main-news","24":"tag-mainnews","25":"tag-national-childrens-hospital","26":"tag-news","27":"tag-top-stories","28":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}