National Children's Hospital 'held hostage' in negotiations with BAM ...

David Gunning of the National Paediatric Development Board told the Oireachtas health committee he could not say the June 2025 timeline will be met without that level of detailed report from the builders BAM.

"We need a detailed programme which we can analyse and scrutinise."

Another slip in the timeline is not impossible, he added.

He added that "as of today not one room has been fully completed".

Some 3,100 rooms including theatres have yet to be signed off as complete.

Earlier, the officials said there is the potential to finally be completed by next June, or around that time, if BAM delivered in how it was resourcing the job.

Amid accusations that the builders BAM were holding the hospital as "hostage" to extract more money, with additional claims of over €700m, it also emerged that some signs of progress in speeding up the final stages of the long-delayed hospital were seen last week.

Inside look at new National Children's Hospital as completion reaches 92%

The meeting heard that 72 rooms were re-offered last week and they are being inspected.

Phelim Devine, the project director, told the committee that the key problem is that none of the rooms are completed to a standard with significant unfinished sections.

"We are averaging about 13 to 15 defects per room, on average. These aren’t scuffs of paints. These are compliance issues. It is remarkable that we have these rooms offered as complete when in fact they are not complete."

Mr Gunning said that "hundreds of rooms" fully completed need to be offered to meet the June timeline.

The builders have only committed to around 60pc of the resources needed to complete the programme so far.

He also said that even if the hospital is finished by June it will not open to the first patients until 2026.

He told the committee "BAM's continued failure to provide a compliant baseline programme and its shifting of dates is not acceptable to the the board".

He accused the builder of a "a complete disregard for internationally recognised professional processes".

The project "should be working like a factory, spitting out rooms" , he added.

Mr Gunning accused BAM of using the hospital as a "hostage" to secure more funding from the State.

BAM is claiming an additional €748m and 18 claims make up 80pc .

While Bam has claimed this value - to date, the net change to the overall contract sum - as determined by the Employer’s Representative (ER), agreed in conciliation and subject to an adjudication decision - is approximately €35 m, excluding inflation, he added.

The board said the number of additional days of work it believes it needs to pay for is fewer than 20 but BAM is claiming more than 700.

A process of assessment is available and number are in the courts.

Mr Gunning rejected accusations by the builders that 23,000 design changes was behind the delay.

Mr Devine disputed how changes were defined, and said that there have only been 449 change orders, adding that many of the changes BAM describes could have been minor updates to drawings.

In response to the testimony by the children’s hospital board, the builders BAM said it again rejected in the strongest terms the “misleading, ill-informed and incorrect allegations levelled against it”.

It is not in any way seeking to “extract as much money from the Irish taxpayer as possible” and not “holding the state to ransom or showing complete disregard for sick children and young people and their families”.

“BAM is only looking for the money to which it is properly entitled for work done under the contract, and not a penny more,” it said.

“BAM is writing to the Minister for Health and the Taoiseach to set out our issues with the points raised in the Minister’s recent letter.

"At this stage, BAM wishes to outline a number of important facts which were misrepresented or not discussed by the Board during their appearance before the health committee.”

It said that currently it is “engaged in a process of carrying out a campaign of works which are necessary to correct thousands of design errors which were identified by the development board’s design team in January 2024 following a compliance audit".

"These errors require the removal and relocation of thousands of ceiling-mounted services across the hospital, including smoke detectors, light sensors, CCTV cameras, emergency signage and sprinkler heads,” it said.

“To be clear, none of the 3,000 rooms referenced by the Board were handed over as ‘completed’ and, in many cases, cannot be handed over as such, due to ongoing remediation works on the reflected ceiling plans.

"The 72 rooms which were reference as potentially completed today are in an area of the hospital where this remediation work has been finished."

It said that BAM has tried on “multiple occasions to reach a settlement with the Board on outstanding claims, but this has been unsuccessful”.

"The mediation process must restart as soon as possible and we urge the board to engage with us,” the statement added.