Advertisement

Harris insists "real scandal" would be to delay children's hospital - despite spiralling costs

The Health Minister has challenged critics of the new National Children's Hospital to outline wha...
Newstalk
Newstalk

09.25 4 Feb 2019


Share this article


Harris insists "real s...

Harris insists "real scandal" would be to delay children's hospital - despite spiralling costs

Newstalk
Newstalk

09.25 4 Feb 2019


Share this article


The Health Minister has challenged critics of the new National Children's Hospital to outline what they would have done differently in his place.

Simon Harris insists he only had three options in front of him when the huge cost overruns of the project became clear.

The price tag for the project has ballooned to more than €1.7bn – with some TDs warning that it is now unlikely to come in for less than €2bn.

Advertisement

The spiralling costs have led to renewed calls for the project to be relocated out of Dublin city centre to a greenfield site.

"Re-tender, pause or proceed"

This afternoon, Minister Harris said the project will go ahead as planned where it is.

“I was presented with three options in terms of this hospital,” he said.

“Pause it – we are not pausing this project on my watch, it has been paused for a generation.

“Proceed – which seemed to be the sensible thing to do.

“Or re-tender it – which would have actually cost more money and delayed the project further.

“What other people need to explain is, if they were sitting in my chair, which different decision would they have made?

“They were the only three options – re-tender, pause or proceed.”

National Children's Hospital

He urged the public to focus on what the finished product will be, rather than what it will cost.

“Of course trying to rein in the cost of this project is important – but not at any cost,” he said.

“We have heard a lot of people talking about the cost of the project; but there are very few people talking about the cost of not delivering this project.

“Politicians have let out children down for generations in failing to build this hospital.

“The real scandal here would be not building the hospital. There are kids today in our children’s hospitals being well looked after, but in sub-standard conditions – they have waited far too long for this.”

Fianna Fail spokesperson on health Stephen Donnelly speaking to the media at Leinster House, 16-01-2019. Image: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

Individual accountability

Earlier, Fianna Fáil welcomed the decision to hold people responsible at an individual level for decisions leading to the spiralling cost of the hospital.

Over the weekend, the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar confirmed that the terms of reference for the independent review into the project will be changed to allow it to examine culpability.

It followed criticism of the decision to instruct PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) – which is carrying out the review – to stop short of finding individuals accountable for what went wrong.

On Newstalk Breakfast this morning Fianna Fáil health spokesperson Stephen Donnelly welcomed the Government’s U-Turn.

Spiraling cost

He warned however that the Government’s full focus should be on keeping the costs down – rather than individual resignations.

“Ultimately what we need to avoid is this becoming about who resigns,” he said.

“I note the Government have changed their terms of reference to include individual accountability – which is the right thing to do,” he said.

“They were setting up a half-a-million Euro report to look at a half-a-billion Euro overspend, but saying that PwC were not allowed to look at individual culpability but also were not allowed to look at costs.

“The danger is, as people start to resign, that the political focus becomes on party politics or that awful phrase ‘heads on a plate.'

“That really is not the point right now; the point right now must be delivering the best possible hospital we can and doing so at a cost that doesn’t blow a load of other healthcare projects out of the water for the coming years.”

He said the chair of the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board Tom Costello had “done the right thing” in announcing his resignation on Saturday, noting that there are an “awful lot of questions to be answered.”

Location

Meanwhile, the New Children's Hospital Alliance is continuing to call for the project to be moved away from the St James’s Hospital site to a location off the M50.

Spokesperson Dr Fin Breatnach, a retired paediatric oncologist, said moving the project is the only way to ensure the facility is easily accessible to children right around the country.

“We know that nine out of every ten children in this country live outside of the M50,” he said.

“It just seems utterly crazy to me that we are forcing 90% of the children to drive past the M50; to actually have to navigate it for many of them and drive right into the congested city centre.”

He said it is not too late to move the project – despite the huge amount of work that has already been undertaken.

“They have dug a big hole in the site at James’s and that can be used for car parking which they are very short of in James’s,” he said.

“If they could price the building of children’s hospital on a green field site which was large enough to accommodate a maternity hospital that was either built at the same time or subsequently – that would be enormously helpful I think.

“It would give us some idea of the costs of stopping the project now and moving to a new location.”

Wrong location

Deputy Donnelly said he believes that “at this stage” the project “probably does” have to go ahead at the St James’s site.

“Do I think it is in the right place? No I don’t,” he said.

“Would you start from here? No I don’t think you would.

“They are trying to squeeze this in on a six acre site. We will see what PwC says but I have no doubt that trying to squeeze it in is part of what is leading to these ridiculous costs.

“I am not excusing it but it is probably one of the factors that has made the costs go up.”

He noted that there were 90 acres available at the site of Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown and said he would like PwC to examine what the costs of moving the hospital now might be.

“Now I imagine it would conclude and say at this point you have to go ahead where you are,” he said.

“We have got to focus on keeping these costs down.”


Share this article


Most Popular