The Government is to introduce new financial safeguards into the plans for building the new national maternity hospital, the Minister for Health has told the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
In a letter, to be published later this week by the committee, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill said a new pre-construction services agreement (PCSA) will be introduced for the period between the identification of the preferred main contractor and the signing of the construction contract.
“During the PSCA there will be no ability for the tenderer(s) to adjust their tender offer(s). Cost will strictly be outside of the scope of the PCSA, and this will be explicitly set out within the PCSA condition of contract,” the Minister said.
The new national maternity hospital is scheduled to be constructed on the St Vincent’s campus at Elm Park in South Dublin. The new hospital is expected to cost close to €2 billion, more than 10 times the amount originally allocated when the project was announced more than a decade ago.
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Senior health service figures maintain that construction costs for the hospital are likely to be about €1.5 billion or higher, and that other bills associated with developing and commissioning the facility could push the final price to some €2 billion.
Amid concerns over the cost of the new hospital, the PAC sought a report from the Department of Health and the Department of Public Expenditure.
The Minister said in her letter that the relocation of the national maternity hospital from its existing site at Holles Street to the St Vincent’s campus would be the “greatest infrastructural investment by the State, to date, in the area of women’s health”.
Ms Carroll MacNeill said it would provide world-class facilities, including 244 beds in single occupancy rooms This is 80 beds more than are in Holles Street. There will also be five operating theatres, a neonatal intensive care unit and direct access to facilities at St Vincent’s University Hospital.
So far more than €135 million has been spent on the new hospital, which is expected to open in the early 2030s.
Ms Carroll MacNeill said it is expected that, when the PCSA is sufficiently advanced, Government consent to proceed to sign main contracts would be sought around late September.
The Minister said a risk mitigation strategy has been developedand this incorporates lessons learned from other significant health infrastructure programmes nationally and internationally, including the controversial new national children’s hospital.
“Risk mitigation is a key consideration for any big infrastructural project and while risk cannot be entirely eliminated, it can be actively and appropriately managed,” she said.
The Minster said the HSE has engaged significantly with stakeholders, including the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board, the National Maternity Hospital Design Team and legal advisers to ensure contractual arrangements for the new hospital will protect the State’s interests. The arrangements must also ensure that the “key learning from the new children’s hospital “appropriately captured and applied wherever possible”.
