John Brady TD accuses Stephen Donnelly of attempting to fabricate a row with building contractors to try and distance himself from National Children’s Hospital Scandal
Wicklow Sinn Féin TD John Brady has accused the Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly of attempting to fabricate a row with building contractors BAM in an effort to distance himself from the debacle which he and his government have allowed the National Children’s Hospital to become.
With 17 missed completion deadlines, €1.5 billion overspend (to date), and a new completion date for 2026, a full ten years after Fine Gael announced the project in 2016, it will be the most expensive hospital ever built in the world.
Brady said:
“The reality here is that for a long time now the Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has become the latest in a line of Health Ministers, including Leo Varadkar, and Simon Harris, to have lost complete control over the management of the building of the National Children’s Hospital.
Minister Donnelly and his government colleagues, and I include former Minister for Health Simon Harris, have stood by as a total of 17 completion deadlines have been missed.
Overspend is now running at least €1.5 billion. An obscene amount.
The fact is that with a general election looming at some stage in the near future, the Minister has now chosen the time to attempt to put distance between himself and the fiasco by picking a fight with BAM.
I also want to be very clear that BAM has serious questions to answer. And have had for quite some time. I believe that they are holding the Irish taxpayer to ransom and have been allowed to get away with it through ineffectual oversight by three Health Ministers, Leo Varadkar, Simon Harris and Stephen Donnelly.
But that the current Minister, Stephen Donnelly, would now choose this time – 17 completion deadlines, four years late, and €1.5 billion later, raises questions as to why he has waited all this time?
If the state ever manages to oversee the completion of this hospital, it will be the most expensive hospital in the world.
We are approaching a situation where it is difficult to argue against the need for a public inquiry to determine how this outrageous debacle could be allowed to continue for so long, at such a cost, without the government getting a grip on the matter.
BAM needs to be held publicly accountable alongside Stephen Donnelly and Simon Harris, as we have yet to be provided with an explanation that comes close to answering the questions that hang over the Minister for Health and the Taoiseach.
In 2016 the then Minister for Health Leo Varadkar said that it would open in 2020. Now it has an estimated opening date of 2026, a full ten years later – and that is if the new deadlines can be met, which is highly questionable if this government is somehow returned for another term.
The real victims of this fiasco are the countless children and their families, who should have received treatment there.
With an anticipated ten-year completion cycle, there are further questions of technological redundancy creeping in.
We live in a world where technology is advancing exponentially, which could leave a ten year plus design in need of remodelling in order to ensure that the latest medical advances are available in the treatment of children from across the state.
Both Stephen Donnelly, and Simon Harris, both Wicklow TDs need to come clean about the level of their responsibility and culpability, in what has become a national scandal.
They cannot be allowed to use political theatre to somehow avoid scrutiny for their failure to provide oversight and management of this scandal.” ENDs