CHI to get access to new children’s hospital eight months later than planned

Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) is to get access to the new children’s hospital from Monday, eight months after that phase of the project was due to begin.

The body overseeing the €2.2 billion project, the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board (NPHDB), agreed with contractor BAM Ireland that CHI could have access to the site from April to mitigate risks of delays to operational commissioning and to complete technical commissioning.

However, this date was continually pushed back due to delays in the building being ready, and will now not begin until next week, senior health sources said.

The hospital is expected to be completed next year. Operational commissioning will take six to nine months, after which the first patients can be treated in the hospital, with fears growing this could be as late as 2027.

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Building on the site at St James’s Hospital in Dublin began in 2016 after years of disagreement over its location. It was due to be completed in November 2022.

The years since 2016 have been marked by ballooning costs, from €987 million to €2.2 billion, with repeated delays exacerbated by an increasingly fractious relationship between the contractors and the NPHDB.

CHI, which runs paediatric healthcare and will operate the new children’s hospital upon its completion, has been under consistent pressure in recent months, particularly around the provision of orthopaedic care for children.

A report published by the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) into the use of unlicensed metal springs in spinal procedures on three children in Temple Street Children’s Hospital in Dublin found children were “not protected from the risk of harm”.

A second report, on hip surgeries, found a majority of surgeries in two hospitals did not meet the threshold for surgical intervention. A third report, by orthopaedic consultant Selvadurai Nayagam, is also being carried out and expected to be published early next year.

Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill announced in September that CHI will be subsumed back into the Health Service Executive (HSE). She also announced there will be a statutory inquiry into spinal care for children.

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