The August deadline for completion of the National Children’s Hospital will be missed and the hospital will now not be ready until October – at the earliest.

The so-called ‘most modern facility of its kind anywhere in the world’, which has cost €2.24billion, had been due to open earlier this year but the signs are it will miss its deadline for the 19th time, with October now being mooted as a possible opening date – and that for medical staff only.

Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chair John Brady of Sinn Féin told Extra.ie yesterday: ‘This is very frustrating for our members but more so for members of the public and the children who’ve been waiting for this long-promised facility.

‘It will be at least 15 weeks for the remaining rooms [at the hospital] to be either signed off or have snagging works finished.’

Mr Brady said the debacle over the completion of the hospital, which has cost €2.24billion, was a classic example of poor planning and lack of efficiency which the Government has supervised.

The first engagement with sick children at the new hospital now looks set to be put back at least another 12 months. Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill told the PAC last week that just 71% of rooms at the hospital have been signed off.

As of May 6, figures provided by the Health Minister show that 4,053 rooms have been approved by the design team overseeing the project, with another 52 having been signed off since then.

A spokesman for the Department of Health played down the latest criticism and said: ‘The National Paediatric Hospital Development Board (NPHDB) and Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) have obtained early access to the first floor of the hot block and are currently installing equipment in this space.

‘The National Children’s Hospital will be fully equipped by the NPHDB and CHI once substantial completion is achieved. The Early Access Agreement that is in place enables the NPHDB and CHI to equip the hot block, from lower ground to the second floor along with the wards at level six, ahead of substantial completion subject to the employers’ representative being satisfied that the spaces have reached the contractual standard.’

The spokesman said: ‘The final floor to be provided under the Early Access Agreement is the second floor of the hot block. It is anticipated that this will be provided before the end of July 2026.

‘The programme provided by BAM is currently under review by the employers’ representative. BAM’s programme includes current indicative timelines that point to completion towards the end of the summer. ‘

‘However, this remains subject to validation and testing by the independent employers’ representative, a process which takes a number of weeks to complete.

‘This is nearing completion. The contractor is required to deliver in line with its agreed programme, including ensuring that the necessary resources are in place to achieve full delivery.’

A spokesman for construction company BAM told the Sunday Independent that, of the remaining 1,623 rooms, 971 have been offered to the board of the hospital and the design team. But these rooms are still awaiting review, with no guarantee that design issues will not arise once inspections have been carried out.

The original cost of the National Children’s Hospital was estimated at €650million when clearance work at the site in the Inchicore/ Kilmainham area of Dublin commenced in August 2016, with a completion deadline at that stage of August 2022.

However, ten years on, the final cost is now estimated to be in the region of €2.3billion. Mr Brady says he now has serious concerns that the proposed metro system for Dublin city will cost many multiples of the current estimated budget of €12billion.

The Sinn Féin Wicklow TD said if the fiasco with the budget overruns for the National Children’s Hospital are not properly addressed by the Government, the Metro could end up being the most expensive project in the world.

He said: ‘The cost of the Metro is of serious concern. I don’t have much confidence in the Government’s oversight, in terms of their delivery of this. ‘We see it with the rollout of key NTA [National Transport Authority] projects where no lessons have been learned.

‘There have been major overruns, massive wastage, whether it’s the failure to forward-plan or the fact that we have 98 electric buses in storage costing €20,000 per week because of the failure to put electric chargers in place,’ he said.

‘There needs to be a step change but I’m not overly confident the Government has the will or the will power to address these cost overruns,’ Mr Brady added.