Irish Examiner view: Fiasco over children's hospital must never be repeated
The Extra Colin Picture: 2,782 Children's Hospital Keegan For National Claim Submitted Costs Bam
We have come to expect delays, problems and eye-watering budget overruns when it comes to the new National Children’s Hospital, yet the details that emerged from yesterday’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) still had the power to shock. To outrage even.
As PAC chairman Brian Stanley said, it was “absolutely outrageous stuff” to hear that no financial penalties had been levied on building contractors BAM for ongoing delays.
We heard of yet more delays when David Gunning, CEO of the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board (NPHDB), said he could not guarantee that children would be treated at the hospital by August 2025.
Who wouldn’t add such a proviso when all deadlines to date have been “missed by a country mile”? to quote Mr Stanley’s jaunty phrase.
There’s isn’t a formulation of words loaded enough to describe the litany of woes that has beset the project, although Alan Kelly of Labour came close when he said the project was like a bad episode of on speed.
There were other startling reminders of the difficulties involved in bringing a project of such magnitude to completion. BAM has submitted an incredible 2,782 extra claim costs. Some 2,182 of those have been valued at around €785m.
To put that in context, that figure is more than the total projected cost (€650m) of building the hospital when planning permission was first granted for the St James’s Hospital campus in Dublin in 2016.
At that point, construction was expected to take four years.
In the Dáil yesterday, Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty reminded the House that Leo Varadkar once remarked that, “short of an asteroid hitting the planet”, the National Children’s Hospital would be built by 2020.
If there was one note of hope, it came from Tánaiste Micheál Martin, who said the Government was “not going to say finish at any cost” and it would not roll over on more demands for funding.
There will certainly be more twists and turns in this sorry saga before the first child is treated at the much-needed hospital.
If anything is to be gained at this late stage, it is this: Learn the lessons of the children’s hospital fiasco to ensure the more efficient management of public money in future projects.
The question of ownership of the new national maternity hospital has already generated thousands of headlines. Let us hope that the planning, budget oversight, and execution of the project will not do the same.
Meanwhile, the campaign to name the new children’s hospital after politician, activist, and doctor Kathleen Lynn continues. It is worth recalling that she and her partner Madeleine ffrench-Mullen opened a children’s hospital in 1919 with just £70 and two cots.
The couple and the hospital’s all-female staff provided free medical care and did much to improve the treatment of rickets and TB.
Those early medical pioneers remind us of what is important in all of this — the children who need the care this state-of-the-art hospital will provide when it eventually opens.
When the Assisted Human Reproduction Bill, which passed the final stage in the Dáil on Wednesday, becomes law, it will give legal recognition — with some exceptions — to families with children born through surrogacy.
It is a welcome move, but it took a very long time. The legislation was first drafted in 2017 but surrogate parents remained in an excruciating limbo until now. The slow pace of legislating for the reality on the ground is sadly a feature of Irish life.
The truth of that was particularly visible in this case because one of its principal advocates was a senator who was personally affected by a lack of regulation.
Fine Gael senator Mary Seery Kearney’s daughter was born through surrogacy, yet Ms Seery Kearney won’t be legally recognised as her mother until this bill is made law. At least the bill will now proceed to the second stage in the Seanad before the summer Oireachtas recess.
While many have welcomed the Assisted Human Reproduction Bill, it leaves some people behind. A number of surrogate parents — those whose marriages have broken down, for instance — are not included.
Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said these matters will be addressed through a supplementary bill in September.
Let’s hope so, because further delays will have a real negative impact on parents’ and children’s lives.
The excitement generated by the recent sighting of a rare yellow-crowned night heron in Belcarra, Co Mayo, shows the deep interest in the natural world. At a time when it is under existential threat from pollution, intensive farming practices, and the climate emergency, it is uplifting to witness an event experts have described as a “once-in-a-lifetime experience”.
Happily, the hatching this week of 12 curlew chicks at Fota Wildlife Park in Co Cork means that sighting the critically-endangered species will not have to be a rare event.
More chicks are expected soon, thanks to the Breeding Waders European Innovation Partnership Programme. Once the chicks can fly, they will be released back into the wild in an attempt to support a bird species on the brink of extension.
Meanwhile, the twin penguins who caused a stir when they arrived at Dingle Ocean World earlier this month will never be released from captivity. Nevertheless, interest in their arrival (and their father’s efforts to help) is a very positive thing because the more we marvel at the wonders of nature, the more likely we are to take real steps to protect it.