The Minister for Health has said she hopes the new National Children's Hospital could accept patients from December if the hospital construction was completed by April.
Jennifer Carroll MacNeill also said a similar contract underpinning the long-delayed construction of the hospital would not be used again.
She made the comments when appearing before the Oireachtas Committee on Health.
The deadline for the completion of the project has been pushed back over a dozen times and costs have spiralled from a planned €650 million to an expected €2.2 billion.
After the completion of construction by the main contractor BAM, the hospital will also require a commissioning period of between six and nine months, to install healthcare machines, for example, before it becomes operational.
Asked by committee chairman Padraig Rice whether she was confident the 30 April deadline would be met by BAM, Ms Carroll MacNeill said "that's up to BAM".
"If the hospital is handed over at the end of April, and if everything goes well with the commissioning period, and we really have worked hard to try to make that as tight as possible, then that would be my expectation (that patients would be in the hospital by December)."
"What are you doing to ensure the BAM meets its obligation to deliver that hospital?" Mr Rice asked.
Ms Carroll MacNeill said: "What do you believe is within my power to do, chair, what are the procedural tools that are available to me?
"I have challenged BAM, as has my predecessor, both privately, in the media, in public, by way of letter, by way of update to you, to provide clear, clear evidence as to what needs to happen for them to finish it."
Asked by Mr Rice if this meant the hospital contract was flawed, the minister said: "I would not sign... I would not...
"With the current projects that we are moving forward, we would not have a similar contractual structure, and I think we will see that in respect of the National Maternity Hospital and other major projects that we will be advancing."
Asked if the contract was "fundamentally flawed", she said: "We would not take that step again.
"The contractual structure is not one we would approach again, is not one we would adopt again."
BAM 'committed to delivering this world-class hospital'
In a statement this afternoon, BAM said it and its teams are "working intensively" to complete this process.
It added that the children's hospital is "an exceptionally complex healthcare facility and is now in the final stages of commissioning and de-snagging".
"At this stage of a project of this scale, it is expected that system integration matters — including elements of the ventilation system — will undergo detailed testing, investigation and fine-tuning to achieve the specified performance standards," it added.
It said that the project remains "more than adequately resourced for the current phase of works".
The company said that it has a "proud legacy of delivering critical infrastructure across Ireland over the past 60 years" and that it is "fully committed to delivering this world-class hospital for the children of Ireland within the shortest possible timeframe".
Over 10,000 outstanding defects at new National Children's Hospital
The committee was given written update on the hospital project from the minister, which said BAM Ireland has still to deliver the contractual early access to the facility, which would amount to around 30% of the building.
At this stage, the State has been only able to access 429 of the 1,700 rooms intended for early access.
The minister told the committee that she understands the project has been under-resourced by BAM from a staffing viewpoint.
She said the design team identified over 175,000 defects for rectification by BAM, and that over 10,000 defects remain to be resolved, which include damage to floors, walls and ceilings, mechanical systems not installed correctly and leaks from services.
Some of the issues relate to building regulations and safety, including fire door rectification arising from the warping of doors and seals.
Access is now to be delivered in two phases and the revised substantial completion date for the new hospital is 30 April this year, the 18th time the date has shifted.
The minister said that the original substantial completion date was December 2022, which now represents a 40-month delay.
The update said that on 19 December last, BAM Ireland facilitated partial additional early access to the facility, confined to the Ward Block on Level 6, the ground-level car park outside the emergency department, two lifts and a stair core for access.
Since then, Children's Health Ireland (CHI) and the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board have completed a deep clean of 360 rooms on level 6, have installed over 90% of the Electronic Health Record equipment, and have completed installation of all ICT equipment for Level 6.
The minister said that the deployment of around 3,000 pieces of medical and non-medical equipment was successfully completed last week.
But she noted that the contractual early access to around 30% of the building, which was committed to the previous minister, Stephen Donnelly in October 2024, has still to be fully delivered by BAM.
Additional reporting PA
