The CEO of the National Children's Hospital has told the Public Accounts Committee that the facility will not be substantially completed until next February, according to the builders BAM.
David Gunning said the latest monthly report from contractors BAM indicated that the substantial completion date will be February 2025.
PAC Chairman, Sinn Féin TD Brian Stanley, said the completion dates have been missed by a "country mile".
The total amount spent on the hospital up to April is €1.4 billion.
Green Party TD Marc Ó Cathasaigh said to see the dates and budgets slipping away is dispiriting.
He said there is a contractor playing a "slow bicycle race" and that February 2025 is a difficult date to believe.
Mr Ó Cathasaigh asked Mr Gunning from his view, are the contractors serious in achieving that date.
In reply, Mr Gunning said there are around 1,100 people turning up every day on site. "We have to acknowledge" that is not enough, but "we're getting closer as the work progresses".
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
He said there are finished areas, and also some still under progress.
Mr Gunning said the February 2025 date is achievable, but until he sees the detailed programme, he cannot convey certainty in that date to the committee.
He said the contractor has been told that more resources are required.
BAM has submitted 2,782 extra claim costs, of which 2,182 have been valued at a cost of around €785m.
However, only a small amount of the claims have been determined in favour of BAM to the value of over €22.8m.
The board told PAC that the net change to the overall contract value is around €27m, including conciliations and adjudications on extra claims.
Other claims are in a disputes management process and two proceedings are before the High Court.
Once completed, the new hospital will have 6,000 clinical spaces, 380 in-patient bedrooms and 22 operating theatres.
The committee heard there are around 4,000 rooms that are not yet at the standard, but are 80% or 90% completed.
'February is not a guarantee' - Murphy
PAC deputy Chair Social Democrats TD Catherine Murphy said it was clear that there are not sufficient workers on site, and that she was not feeling optimistic.
Speaking on RTÉ's News at One she said: "It’s very difficult to know whether or not February is realistic.
"I wouldn't be optimistic ... They [NPHDB] couldn't give us a conclusive answer today, because all they got from the contractor was the date, as opposed to the material that shows how you get the work done between now and February.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
"February is not a guarantee," she added.
Once the project is finished and handed over, then there is an estimated six months for CHI for completion of some of the internal running and commissioning, such as moving beds in and making sure other things work, she said.
"If there is slippage on the February date and you start moving into the winter, it’s much more difficult for CHI to move patients in, you could easily see it going into the following year. That’s absolutely outrageous for the children that require this hospital."
She said that PAC asked for a guarantee on costs, but these were not given, and they were told that they could not be given.
Ms Murphy added that there are still (legal) claims coming in and the board is working to dispute a lot of those claims, but some of the issues still need to be resolved in the courts.
"There has to be some penalty that will really put skids on this developer to get this project over the line. We can't keep on having delays and cost overruns," she said.
Not resourced 'sufficiently' - Tánaiste
It is likely that the National Children's Hospital will not open until 2026, Sinn Féin TD Pearse Doherty has said.
He told the Dáil that the Government had lost control of the project and described it as a "slow-moving car crash".
Every cost has been broken, but no one is being held to account for the fiasco, he said.
Mr Doherty said the Health Minister Stephen Donnelly has been asleep at the wheel.
Tánaiste Micheál Martin said all the deadlines which have been missed were set by contractors BAM.
He said that BAM has not resourced the project sufficiently and he asked them to do so now.
The Tánaiste said the Government will not roll over in its negotiations with BAM and it must get value for the taxpayer.
In a statement, BAM said that any suggestion it is deliberately not committing adequate resources to the project or is in any way slowing down the delivery of the hospital is completely untrue.
It said it has repeatedly highlighted design changes as the primary cause of the delays and disruption to the project.
BAM said it is a global leader in the construction sector, working to the highest recognised international standards.
It said it is obliged under the terms of the contract to raise any variation, including instructions, with a time or cost implication as a "claim".
Additional reporting Fergal Bowers
