Same happened when Google and other multinationals built their EU HQ's in Dublin. Fancy office building were built but no one bothered to build any accommodation for the staff that would work there.
It was never about building the best hospital for children. All these projects are only about setting up a syphon of public funds to the private sector and round about to the politicians and their friends pockets.
As a Irish man who lives in Dublin, can I congratulate you on your excellent research and reporting on this building farce. To think that this is going to cost more that the Burj Khalif and for what we are getting, beggars belief.
@@Hujhjgffw dudes such a racist he thinks expats are literal slaves. Burj Khalifa have been connected to the sewage system for many years now. but basic facts won't stop yo from saying your racism against arabs.
I argued with a guy on Reddit who said he could understand why it cost so much and that hospitals are 'complicated' structures. I made the point that it's over half the cost of the new WTC, which is almost 1800 feet tall and is in downtown Manhattan. Our electorate are fcking idiots.
There is another megaproject here in Ireland. They spend 300k euros to build a shed for bicycles. And the shed was not constructed correctly so it does not protect the bicycle from the rain.
As a Dutch citizen, the moment I heard the development company BAM I got chills. There have been multiple collapses and unsafe government buildings, condemned buildings and endless delays because of BAM in the Netherlands.
Hi from Ireland. I have heard of problems relating to BAM developed projects in the past but not looked too much into it. Can't wait for the future bullshit that's going to come to light here. Not in a good way though.
"The Dutch authorities' investigation into BAM International is centered on potential financial irregularities in some completed projects. The investigation, conducted by the Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service and the Public Prosecutions Office, involved a raid on BAM’s offices in Gouda. Although BAM International has fully cooperated, the company has not disclosed specific details of the allegations, and no final outcomes have been publicly reported so far. BAM has since wound down its international operations due to a lack of positive prospects" "in incidents related to structural faults. One notable case was the collapse of a parking garage at Eindhoven Airport in 2017. Subcontractors had warned BAM about visible cracks two months before the collapse, but these were initially dismissed as aesthetic rather than structural issues."
There is zero accountability in the public service in Ireland. The Health Service Executive (HSE) is the epitome of incompetence. Inefficiency and lack of accountability. Patients are dying on the floors of public health hospitals and no one is being held accountable. It’s a national disgrace. Unfortunately it’s not just healthcare, it’s in all areas of the public sector.
Same with the cannabis decriminalisation, they were told by citizens assembly to do it yet they keep dilating and posponing as they have more deeper interests than public health
Absolutely unreal, unbelievable. Hospital should never have been built there. Should have been built just outside of the M50 motorway to facilitate all the people of Ireland travelling to Dublin, not having to go into city centre. The waste of money is absolutely unreal and nobody is held accountable. Last month an outdoor bicycle shelter for 18 bikes built in government building for €335,000. Unreal and unbelievable, but it's true.
Couldn't be put outside of the M50. There will be consultants working in the hospital and teaching in the universities, and nurses etc. will be training in this hospital and attending university so it wouldn't be possible for them to travel to outside the M50 and still make it back for lectures in the likes of Trinity and UCD. Also, the largest population in the country is in Dublin City center so they needed to build 'a children's hospital' here, but not a national children's hospital. There should have been one built in Dublin that was half this size, in a location that was easily accessible but road and public transport and they should also have built 2 smaller ones in Cork close to UCC and Galway close to UCG.
It's in the right spot as there are no cancer services in the new hospital. The amount of kids who get cancer in Ireland is very low. The plan is to use the cancer services of St James's hospital.
Thank you for your report. The whole project was corrupt from the start, location, location, location. The hospital should have been built on an easer to access site, somewhere around the m50(main road around the city), accessible to people outside of the city and inside of the city. There would have been little planning permission issues. But now I will have to get onto a bus or tram with a sick child for 2 hours because there is no parking and the public transport isn't good enough for this. Basic basic basic design and planning. Who is accountable? What are our so called leaders doing? Even when the doors are opened it will not work. I am so disappointed. Why do I bother to pay taxes?😢
As a person who works in one of the current children hospitals in dublin, this new hospital is of no use, the current plan is to shift the two working children hospitals to the NCH and close the old ones, so in practicality they are not adding any new beds in the system, in fact the total number of beds in the NCH is even less than the current hospitals. Combined that with the location, parking and transport issues its going to be a disaster.
I'm Irish and can tell you this type of incompetence and corruption has been going on for generations. By the time it opens it will be out dated and not fit for purpose.
Irish here. Until the day comes when civil servants suffer severe consequences for these mistakes, they will continue to happen. We need to see careers ended, pensions torn up and even criminal charges if the law has been broken.
It's the politicians who are making bank or getting favours. Paschal Donohue signs off on all of this, this month he was awarded the freedom of London City. Wakey wakey.
Hear hear, civil servants are unfireable, this is incompatible in a democracy, accountability has to be the paramount vertical to measure work reviews. People must be held accountable, warned and fired when needed, just like any other job.
i work in ireland with the irish govt and health service and its genuinely difficult to say this is surprising. they are the most unorganized, incompetant, and underqualified group of people i have ever witnessed.
plus, if it's so bad and they're so bad you can go to Australia maybe? What county are you from? What is it like in your country? Why did you leave there? I'm not saying there is not truth in your assessment I'm sure there is but when you say "they are" you are now equating ALL the people... The problem is not the Irish people in general it's those that are in charge that never get called out or exposed.
@@willie8976 it's all very well saying that current government isn't addressing the issues but who do you think can, within the currently available funds?
And people will vote for them anyway... generations of people just voting for the party their family votes for, regardless of who's in charge or what they do
@@RiposteBK I'm always depressed when I hear about the battle between the parties at the top. One loses a couple seats, the other gains a couple... Nothing changes.
Yep we Irish love this kinda deal, we buy trains that wont fit our stations, printers that also don't fit where intended, build bike racks that cost the same as a house, so why build four hospitals when we could have one for the price of four?
As an Irish citizen its good to see you cover this Simon. An absolute insult to the irish taxpayer. Other countries need to see how corrupt this country is. Never mind the 'richest, fastest growing country in Europe' BS. The ordinary irish citizen struggles to make ends meet.
BAM are getting all the blame for this, but it all went downhill when the design team (architect, consultant and quantity surveyors) put together a very poor tender package. BAM, SISK and Walls (I think) all tendered for it with prices between €950m and €1.2b. They all knew that there was going to be huge money made on this because of the massive discrepancies between the design and the bill of quantities document. This is standard for government projects and it won't change unless the blame is put on the right people and they are held to account. BDO Architects, ARUP & OCSC Consulting engineers and Bruce Shaw quantity surveyors get no coverage and they have been involved from planning stage. Also, the dept. of health may have considered that the project would not have received government funding and may not have gone ahead if they actually put a correct budget together and it showed a predicted price of closer to €2b rather than €1b so they may have under valued their business case. It didn't matter who got the construction contract, the outcome would have been the same.
It was always gonna be a big feck up. By the time they got around to it they were surprised, apparently that the costs had raised. Instead of selling the expensive land in Dublin and moving to a green field site outside Dublin they decided to build there. In Dublin.. To serve the entire country.. And They (Government) din't seem to think they were wrong. Zero accountability, zero consideration for the needs of the people.
I live in Ireland and I don't know a single person who is happy with our health service. We have to wait a YEAR to see a consultant for example. Waiting lists are ridiculous.
2 to 3 weeks waiting for a local GP appointment, same, if not longer for a dentist. I'm waiting 11 weeks for the results on an important scan. I rang the hospital 2 wks ago to see what the delay was, I couldn't get an English speaking person who understood my enquires , I was passed from dept to dept. I eventually just gave up. The stupid thing is, the day, I was in for the scan, there were 10 nurses, & 3 doctors standing around, laughing, joking, looking at charts, walking around with charts, organising their wkend. And this was the assesment dept. When the kitchen / catering staff came through, the staff were the first to be looked after. I could go on & on, but I won't. Irish health system is definitely not for the Irish people. I would say "ask any Irish Nurse", but there isn't any, anymore.
As an irishman i'm appalled at the sheer volume of waste in this country, before the planning of this giant waste of money the then government was offered a complety free brown field property which an irish building contractor would deliver a larger building for less than 280 million euros which may have ended up being 400 ish..which would also have saved the entire country that doesnt live in dublin having to drive through the city to use the hospital, the planning system in this country is a joke of giant proportions just like the project to build this stupid lump of a building.
"The planning system in this country is a joke of monumental proportions" -- starting with "Children have been dying for years, they're dying now, and they will continue to die for the next number of years - but thank Kerrist, the 'dozers are ready to go in"... NIMBYs×: "(Whingey voice) But it's too _hi~iigh!_ It don't _look nice!_ " Planning Authorities: "Oh! Why did no~one say? Well, that's it, lads - we don't care _how_ many hundreds of millions sunk costs! You're just going to have to drop everything and find another site for your hospital!" And thus, not a sod of earth turned for _another_ several years! This the country btw, that had to be taken to court by Europe to make them accept the €13 _billion_ in taxes that Apple were trying to give them, albeit with predictable ill~grace! (The final judgement, after a decade in the courts, came through the other day.) ×'NIMBY' - 'Not In My Back Yard'.
@@arthas640 I was using it in place of an asterisk (**) You start messing around with them boys, next thing, if you're not careful, you end up with half your comment in BOLD!*
Corruption in Ireland became big time with Haughey (late 1970s). Impunity and lack of accountability seems to go back a long way, possibly since independence in the 1920s-how many bishops, priests or nuns did time after the industrial levels of child abuse emerged? How many politicians went down after the mass corruption under Haughey was exposed?
Fantastic video Simon. Very well researched and even as an Irishman who knows how bad the Healthcare system is I was shocked by some of the figures from the video. Next do our €300,000 bike shed at our Government building.
I love my country. But this is one of the big problems we have as a nation: Too many people are happy to wink at corruption instead of insisting that heads roll. There can be no doubt among thinking people that Bertie Ahern, for example, engaged in all kinds of dodgy deals that we should be furious about. Yet a lot people will still say they like him, even with this knowledge. The reaction is something like, "Yeah, he was a sly devil alright!" Instead of "We need to lock people like that up."
Dee Forbes is someone else who should have been sent to prison. Imagine any other country where the state broadcasters CEO squanders millions of taxpayers euro in backhanded payments hidden from officials. Then when Forbes was confronted with the evidence she hastily resigned, pulled out a sick note, and suddenly is unable to ever face even appearing in front of a committee about the money? Dee Forbes should be in prison. This should have warranted a riot.
Sadly "cute whoorism" is alive and well in Ireland; that hospital has lined the pockets of contractors, builders, suppliers and officials. It's an execrable waste of time and money. Nobody who works in the two children's' hospitals think it is in anyway going to alleviate their workload or serve the public any better when those two hospitals are amalgamated into this waste of space.
When people say they 'love Ireland', I really don't know what they even mean anymore. There is so much wrong with our country. we can't just always fall back on 'the craic' as a reason to love it.
@collydub1987 Can't even fall back on the 'Craic' these days. What fucking craic is there to be had when a weekend in Dublin costs the same as a week in fucking Spain? Want to socialise by drinking? Fuck you a single drink costs €6. Want to go see a rugby match/concert/festival? Fuck you tickets cost €150+. Want to smoke some weed and have a nice chill time? Fuck you, straight to court so we can waste thousands of euros over €10 of plant matter and boost crime stats. Want to move up to Dublin to start your new career after finishing college? Fuck you, your rent is now 2/3rds of your income, hope you like buttered bread for each meal of the day! Want to maybe one day own a home by waiting for your parents to eventually die? Fuck you, you live in Donegal and the house will have crumbled to dust long before you inherit it.
Something has went very wrong when a GP annual salary wouldn't be enough for you to get a mortgage in Dublin. How can that be possible? Something rotten is going on .
The "golden circle" in Ireland creaming off the money for themselves, by gravy trains (look how many committees of experts there are getting paid nicely to "oversee" the children's hospital) and by plain grift. Except they're taking it so far these days they might actually economically collapse the country.
The children's hospital near me in Melbourne (Australia, not the US one) as a three-storey fish tank and a meerkat enclosure. It's amazing. I love that they put those in for the sick kids. In all honesty it seems like every doctor and nurse in Ireland, the UK and New Zealand is currently moving to Australia to work. I've never seen such a massive wave of foreign health professionals all arriving at once.
Thank you for covering this debacle. As a nurse in Ireland I can say it’s no surprise. In the last ten years the HSE has become filled with experts and managers. Yet never has care been so slow, so poor and a desicion about almost anything next to impossible to achieve.
Irish children with scoliosis are waiting years for vital surgery. Sixteen year old Aoife Johnson died waiting over 13 hours in Limerick hospital for antibiotics while her parents begged for help, the report redacted the names of the consultants. Children's minister Roderic O'Gorman used GDPR as an excuse to delete files he was sent on the abuse of children in state care. But the Irish govt are patting themselves on the back for bringing children from Gaza to Ireland for medical treatment, and providing rapid-build modular housing estates on state land for Ukrainians (they spent €1m a month on their PETS) People are very unhappy that the govt can spend billions on their policies that get international attention (plus over €335k on their bike shelter), but are a disaster on housing, health, services, etc. that impact people's lives. There are protests against the government, which the govt has blamed on 'far right racists' stoking division
My parents are from Dub. I can remember going there in the 70's and without question it's been the worst poverty I've ever seen first hand. All the slums got knocked down but the corruption is just the same, just has less of a religious component it seems.
@@musicilike69 Dublin had the worst slums in Europe in the past, but poverty was widespread. My father grew up in a rural area with no electricity, no indoor plumbing, and walked miles to school in his bare feet as his family couldn't even afford a pair of shoes for their children. As did everyone else he knew. His brother started work in a coal mine at the age of 15. His father fought the Black & Tans My cousin remembers getting running water at home for the first time at the age of seven (he's now in his late forties). Now I have two sons in college, one in Galway, whose friend pays €600 a month for a room shared with two other lads. That's €1800 a month per ROOM. I don't know how many people share the bathroom and kitchen But, as we've recently discovered, it turns out that the Irish government CAN provide brand new rapid-build modular homes on state land for families in need - just not Irish families. They lecture the Irish people about how privileged they are to live in their own country - a country built up from poverty by our parents, and fought for by our grandparents. And now our children are lucky if they can find a bed to sleep in that they pay through the nose for, while our taxes pay for the brand new free house for a non-Irish family Anyone still voting for FF, FG, or the Greens and believing that the anger in working class communities is because of 'racism' must be living in an ivory tower They must have been too guilt-ridden when TD Catherine Murphy said the Irish had white privilege "throughout their oppression" to think that the Ukrainians (with their free brand-new houses, free healthcare, their €1m a month spent on pets, their trips back home for dental treatment because the waiting lists in Ireland were too long!) are no less white than the Irish families whose loved-ones died from hunger and who held wakes for their children emigrating on coffin ships because even if they didn't die on the way they would never see their home or families again
Our government have been corrupt for as long as we have been a nation. Political power in Ireland is akin to the underhanded dealings we would tuttut from abroad. But blaming Ukrainians, or blaming injured kids from Gaza is lazy and exactly what the government want. If people believe that foreigners and migrants are the problem then it takes focus off the real reason we have housing issues and health care issues and over crowded schools.... because our elected government is an old boys club.... once they've lined their own pockets that's all that matters. Do everyone a favour and actually protest the governments incompetence because all I see anymore is that the Irish are turning into unwelcoming, racist, bigoted mobs that blame everything on 'others'. Your anger is misplaced.
Your comments are absolutely spot on. Our politicians are obsessed with their own careers and pensions and only interested in how Ireland is viewed from abroad. I have never been so convinced that our public representatives have no interest in Irish people and the reality of life in Ireland. Very depressing.
The biggest issue with this hospital is the site location. Without being experts, everyone knew from the outset that it was built in the wrong location. The stipulation was that it needed to be co-located with a full service adult hospital, so it was wedged into this existing site next to St James Hospital near the city centre. It will be impossible to access for staff and patients. The ideal site was about on the outskirts (10k away) in Blanchardstown, on the M50 ring road, and loads of available space for building. They would have needed to upgrade the adjacent hospital but in their infinite wisdom, thought this was not a good idea. It’s mind boggling to think of why this was not the logical choice, when the dog on the street knew it was. They could have built the Children’s hospital and 3 adult hospitals for what they have spent. Ireland is littered with mind boggling construction decisions, from the erection of pelican crossings to Children’s hospitals. It’s horrendous.
Exactly. St James is in a congested enough area already. I dread to think what is going to be like when the NCH opens. No new travel infrastructure is planned as far as I know.
@@Mark.R_ was that Noel Smith ? I remember that .. he was going to build the hospital for the government for if I remember correctly 250 M cost price.
It’s a good thing we didn’t let the dogs in the street choose the location in that case. You’re thinking in a 20th century way, we don’t want people to arrive by car. National facilities need to be centrally located beside public transport not next to a congested motorway.
One item that was missed - every government minister/ member of parliament that has touched this project has only been promoted higher in politics. The more you fail, the more you rise in Irish politics.
Denmark is building two mega hospitals, and the process is similar to what Ireland is going through, with a bloated budget, deadlines keep being pushed back, construction failures and features of the hospitals being canceled from the projects. The Danish healthcare system is also under pressure, and need the new hospitals. Oh, there also seem to be no accountability .. like at all.
In 2022 there were reportedly more than 160,000 unoccupied homes in Ireland. There is not an issue with a lack of housing. There is a problem with widespread corruption and privatisation from a government, most of whom are landlords. Roughly 13 homes per homeless persons. See our recent bike shelter which was billed for over €300,000 which was no more than a lean to shelter with a capacity of about 18 bicycles.
These consist primarily of Old husks that will require extremely extensive renovation, investment properties and luxury apartments. The bigger issue is the refusal of banks to give out loans at a reasonable rate on reasonable terms and the fact there are no laws against institutional investors and foreign individuals buying and owning property. Supply shortfalls are nonsense it's the extreme demand created by the parties I previously mentioned and the pent up demand from younger and middle aged generations of Irish people that is driving prices higher. Also an bord pleanala fuck them
👏👏👏👏👏 👍👍 They (the government) are not saying a word about that, hoping the Irish people will eventually forget about it. FFS, even our teaboy can't find who signed off on it. But, can find a young chap waving an Irish flag in a crowd of thousands 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂. "JAYSUSSSSS"
Those 160,000 vacant homes in Ireland remain private property. If we want to make use of them, we must locate the owners and present them with an offer. The government has no right to infringe on private property, nor should private owners be held accountable for the government's failures. Probate lawyers can help identify the registered owners-some may have moved abroad, others may be unaware, and some may lack the funds to renovate. The responsibility for the housing and health crisis lies solely with the corrupt and incompetent government as you have correctly mentioned. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, have collectively held power for almost a 100 years and now are working together as one entity. Yup, The €335,000 bike shelter is a national disgrace, but unfortunately, I don't believe anything will change. We have no effective opposition party. This renders us effectively a dictatorship.
Simon & Team, thank you so much for covering this disaster of project, I really hope this helps get more international attention on it as the current Irish Government cares much more about their international image and listening to Brussels/Washington than about the standard of living for our citizens. It's the biggest infrastructure failings in the history of the state but it's sadly not the only one, we also currently have a equally disastrous Metro System that is suppose to have been being built for decades and several other problems with vital infrastructure such as Dublin Airport.
I've been in Irish and Brazilian hospitals and the Brazilian experience was much more pleasant. I'm Irish and ashamed of our health system. Its a disgrace.
The first thing i learned when i came to ireland 8 years ago from the Netherlands is that nothing really works in this country. There is nothing easier then to wake up in the morning knowing that it's going to rain today and that you can't rely on anything here.
My sister has a construction company in the west of Ireland, every new build is held up by a local complaining. For example, an 8 new house development on a street with 4 or 5 derelict houses being held up by six people due to lack of parking when at least one of them, a relative, has no car. It shouldn't be possible to block construction for 2 years for €50, make it a grand or two which the person gets back if their complaints are upheld which they lose if their complaints are baseless. It's easy to blame politicians, construction companies when there's a lot of everyday people doing the blocking because to quote my relative... over her dead body will there be houses built across from her.
Ireland is split between those who have all they want when they want, to those who strive to look like they have it all, and finally to those who have very little and can't even imagine having the necessary. Politicians and there "friends" have deeply injured this countries possibilities... it's tragic!
My daughter already attends the existing St James Connolly hospital and parking can be a nightmare and we have to travel there from the country so why they placed it in the city centre baffles me beyond belief. Even if your from Dublin it's awkward to get to. Also we have been in A@E a few times recently and 12/13 hours is optimistic. It's more 24 hours in my experience. What I would add though is that the consultants we attend are top class and have been brilliant to us.
never walk into A&E here in Ireland,my partner got knocked down once,when I questioned why it was taking so long for a doctor to see him I was told and I kid you not, "him coming here by himself is like an assessment in itself....then if you do call an ambulance you could also be waiting for hours... and no he was far from ok...he wasn't very responsive,both legs were purple and black, he could not walk,he was breathing all funny he was steaming like a kettle(never seen that in my life)like just steam coming off his body, and he did not just turn up alone,I brought him...
12 hours Jesus there must have been a doctor working that day. I spent 16 hours in Naas A&E with a broken wrist. Got in at 10 am and saw a doctor at 2am that night. Kip
And yet there's loads of empty office building in south Dublin. An entire building just gone up at Charlemont LUAS station and half of Central Park is stil empty despite being finished 13 years ago. All new housing is completely unaffordable for the majority of the population and those that own the estates reside in tax havens like Luxembourg. My 'landlord' to which my partner and I pay almost 2.5k EUR a month for a small one bed flat in super south Dublin is a company from there. It's a total disgrace.
@@lukemwill99 And your 'Mom & Pop' type landlords - with very rare honourable exceptions - are weird and creepy, psychopathic, thieving scrooges who can barely write their own name, but have three sets of accounts per dwelling - one for the Dept. of Social & Family Affairs, one for the Inland Revenue, and then the third - the _real_ ones...
@@larzlarz1140 The main problem in Ireland is not the level of home ownership, but that virtually no housing has been built since the financial collapse and what little has been built has been bought up wholesale by property companies for the rental market. With a rapidly growing population, due to immigration, there is a serious shortage of accommodation of all types. The country needs 250,000 housing units now to meet the existing demand. The problem is far beyond home ownership statistics in UK or US. Irish people who have good jobs here are leaving to live and work abroad because of the housing situation. This is 100% a politician made problem.
In Perth (Aus) we outdid Ireland. We managed to install Asbestos in our new Children's Hospital, despite it being banned in Australia for new constructions for 30+ years. Not to be outdone by any future pretenders, there was also lead in the drinking water supply inside the hospital (i.e. the lead contamination was in the Hospital's plumbing). There were serious proposals to demolish it prior to opening it and starting again. Unfortunately (fortunately?) the old children's hospital was so dilapidated at that point that it had to go ahead, and bottled drinking water was used until the plumbing could be gutted and replaced. Even with the lead contamination it opened 3 years late and over budget. As you can imagine, the state government that was in charge for the entire project (from commission, to design and construction) got utterly destroyed at the election. They aren't even the main opposition party in the state anymore. The newly elected government then had to defend itself in court over contracts the previous government had signed (among one was for a PERFORMANCE PAYMENT TO THE BUILDER)
You did mention the traffic and lack of parking spaces. The other aspect is the location being so far away for most people around the country to get to. It could have been put in empty fields in Blanchardstown near the other Hospital that's there. It's on a motorway and loads of empty space to build what you needed. The worst thing is this location was in Leo Varadkars constituency, so its fairly bloody obvious there was some bribery and corruption involved to put it in the centre of town, where people will find it really hard to get there or to get there fast. some of the roads leading up to it are ancient smaller roads, that people won't even be able to move out for an ambulance.
Blanchardstown is actually in Varadkar's constituency, not Rialto. Couldn't be put out in Blanch. There will be consultants working in the hospital and teaching in the universities, and nurses etc. will be training in this hospital and attending university so it wouldn't be possible for them to travel to outside the M50 and still make it back for lectures in the likes of Trinity and UCD. Also, the largest population in the country is in Dublin City center so they needed to build 'a children's hospital' here, but not a national children's hospital. There should have been one built in Dublin that was half this size, in a location that was easily accessible but road and public transport and they should also have built 2 smaller ones in Cork close to UCC and Galway close to UCG.
@chrisfox7 I was talking about Blanchardstown being Leo's constituency... The rest of what you said doesn't make any sense either as there already are students working in James Connolly in Blanchardstown. The location wasn't chosen because that's the largest population. The National Children's hospital is meant to service all of Ireland and Blanchardstown has the better access. So it made sense then and it makes sense now.
@@philipmcdonagh1094don't forget, the Moriarty tribunal cost about 100 MILLION when it was all said and done. All to investigate claims of corruption which didn't even amount to a million pounds if I remember correctly. And in the end.... Nothing happened. We live in one big boys club.
Hilariously apt timing on dropping this as they just announced (on Friday night at 10pm too 🙄) that it's delayed until 2026. Absolutely disgraceful behaviour from my country's government. This will be studied years from now along with the Berlin Airport for examples of crazy overspend.
and it was too expensive to install a sprinkler system in the hospital... they didn't plan to install a sprinkler system throughout a building that by its very nature would be occupied by sick children (Children not being known for their situational awareness at the best of times, adults are bad too). "The new National Children’s Hospital has lost its appeal against a requirement to install a sprinkler system throughout the €1 billion development. The National Paediatric Hospital Development Board (NPHDB) had argued that the existing fire safety design already exceeded current standards. The board argued that extending the sprinkler system to all areas of the hospital would add up to €2 million in extra costs."
I'd question if they exceeded the current standards. If the standard says that they should have a sprinkler system, and they could demonstrate that they can evacuate the building in 'X' time more reliably without one, and the other measures ensure they have that time - sure that's valid, but I am willing to bet the designed safety assumes everyone's able bodied
Sprinkler systems aren't a universal panacea and are not always appropriate, particularly in areas where widespread water damage would be the more serious concern. Horses for courses. There are plenty of ways of providing more than adequate fire fighting systems without resorting to the dumb bomb nuclear option, which is the sprinkler system. Popular though that option has become with politicians and public since Grenfell. Hospitals are very hi tech places these days, jam packed with very expensive machines and large battery systems not designed to be under water, or indeed anywhere near water in a fire. Sounds to me like they opted for a hybrid system in the design which accounted for that; which a bunch of outraged taxpayers and their lawyers just rode rough shod over. I hate to think about the outcry to come when a bin fire in a nurses office sets off the sprinkler system and does millions of euros in damage as a result. The biggest killer in projects like this is always the untimely client not understanding the consequences of their design changes and the contractor not explaining those consequences clearly enough. Changing the fire suppression system was insane in terms of the delivery and the budget, not to mention the morale of everyone on site. What else did they change once the project had commenced?
Irish living in Dublin here - it took two years to get planning permission to convert our attic …The underfunding of the healthcare system is particularly unacceptable as the country has a budget surplus.
As somebody who spent 22 years in construction in the United States it is my professional opinion that the project was too ambitious from the start they should have broken it up into smaller hospitals either 3 to 4 and use multiple contractors to build them simultaneously or one contractor to build them one by one they would have gotten more bang for their buck that way
Absolutely. One in Dublin half the size of this one. One in Cork and one in Galway. They would have to be beside or close to universities because the consultants both teach in the Universities and work in the hospitals. Also, nurses etc. would be training in the hospitals as well as attending lectures.
yeah, but they do plan merge and shutdown two other ones in Dublin and move to this one. One of them have better transit location and at least some parking spaces.
Speaking as someone currently sitting about 2 km from the hospital, please let me say this: It is impossible to truly get across how inept the Irish government is at getting ANYTHING done. If a hospital for sick kids is this overdue and overbudget, you can maybe start to see why the Irish housing crisis is as bad as it is.
Sadly I've seen similar in the US. There was a judge who had a million dollar bathroom built for his office. I once had 2 Insane government jobs: 1. Where the school admin all got new $2000 executive chairs while teachers were buying kids supplies like pencils and scrap paper because the school wouldn't provide them 2. A different school district where a random closet had a $1500 light fixture in it and they spent tens of thousands fo dollars remodeling the closet because they disassembled the entire office and rebuilt it exactly as it was with new materials for literally no reason.
They used funding for "active travel" to fix up the carpark. That 336k including tarring the carpark, installing footpaths and barriers, not just the bike shelter itself. It happens a lot here, councils get grants for bike lanes so that they can use some of the money to repair the road.
The Irish public didn't want this site and preferred a green field site on the edge of Dublin city with ample room for car parking, it was rumoured the inner city site was 'chosen' with pressure from consultants who preferred it's close location to them. It's well known the hospital will have a staggered opening, will have difficulty securing most grades of staff and will suddenly find 'issues' with several key areas like ventilation systems in the theatres etc. As others have pointed out, not one politician has been held accountable.
@@captain007x some of CHI Crumlin do live in Naas area as they are my neighbors (and I'm their patient)... so yes, this location is "perfect for them" (yes, sarcasm)
There was also a SPHE schoolbook depicting a pitchfork-wielding, bacon-cabbage-and-spud munching, home-loving, pasty, 'Family A' who enjoyed traditional Irish culture and disliked "imported trash" on TV; and a cosmopolitan, globe-trotting, diverse 'Family B' who enjoyed volunteering with the Red Cross in Syria, and, interestingly, had a partially sighted member who "travelled to Baltimore in the US for specialist treatment. This was paid for by fundraising in our community and by the Irish-American group in Maryland". This is the lesson being learned in Irish schools
@@doithimaceabhard7457 are you serious? Do you feel if there was a family with a different background, for example a 'traditional' Muslim Family A that wore Muslim garb, ate halal food, etc. - that they would have been presented in that way?
@@doithimaceabhard7457 do you feel this is an accurate message: The Syrian leaders should get off their fkn holes and help their own citizens instead of relying on foreign volunteers The Irish government should get off their fkn arses and fund the medical care required by the disabled children of their own taxpayers instead of giving the "message" in schools to children that families can fundraise to pay for their medical treatment in their own "community" and rely on foreign charities Plus the message of this lesson: What effect did weaponised mass migration to Ireland during the Plantations have? Does the legacy of centuries of divisive identity politics on the island of Ireland still linger on today? How did the wealthy ruling class use Divide & Rule culture wars to keep the people too busy fighting among each other to unite against the political hierarchy? How did they scape-goat dissenters through shaming them as a vocal hate-fuelled minority faction of 'Deplorables' that lacked popular support? Why were there centuries of war, famine, insurgency, sectarian conflict and social division in Ireland, followed by generations of Irish peasants living in poverty, squalor, and destitution and reliant on international aid, charity, volunteers, etc., to barely subsist in their own country? When and how did this end and what role did the IRA and the Fenians play? What did Edmund Burke mean when he wrote that rioting by the neglected populace from any grievance real or imaginary, was perverted from its true nature into a conspiracy against the state, and prosecuted as such? Why did the UK government blame the civil unrest in Ireland in 1920 on the lack of emigration of young military-age men: "The principle cause of the trouble is that for five years years emigration has practically ceased. There are 100,000 or 200,000 young men here, of from 18 to 25 years of age, who normally would have left the country" "Then there is no hope of peace until these emigrations have taken place?" "No" - Lord French, 23 January 1920 (source: Military Rule in Ireland 1920, Erskine Childers) Did facilitating the emigration of military-age men from conflict zones play into the hands of the ruling regime, and why is the Irish diaspora so large?
That was a lot of fuss about nothing, a deliberately cartoonish portrayal that was obviously tongue-in-cheek. Our teenagers can take a joke. Lots of pearl-clutching from the permanently outraged, God help them if they ever read The Poor Mouth.
@@sean_d in that case why is my reply blocked when I try to suggest that you should make a similar cartoonish portrayal of a Muslim 'Family A'? As the mere suggestion of this enough to get a comment blocked, it seems to be a case of outrage and pearl-clutching for thee but not for me..
I live in Ireland, excellent research. The rejected first location and this pig-headedly chosen option were both terrible choices. It is a national hospital, so choosing a location in the city centre was always going to be wrong. They had multiple greenfield sites with room for more infrastructure outside the city, which would have brought those costs down. St James was already a working hospital cramped into limited space. They had to spend millions just to prepare the site so they could start building.
My husband worked in a joinery that got an order to make doors for this hospital. They made the doors and sent them to the hospital site. Later on they got another order. Same doors, same amount. Previous doors were not faulty, so who knows why they needed more of the same doors.
I worked on this project nearly 9 years ago... It's a fucking shit show probably the most disorganised project anyone could work on what a fucking nightmare they also made a balls of some parts that were previously considered finished and had to be redone
the reason for the long wait time for admission into hospitals is because we have a system where no matter what injury you have you have to go through a&e to be admitted. so everyone just turns up at a&e , only if you arrive by ambulance do you go straight into the hospital and if they assess you as being not in immediate need of care youll be put out into the waiting room for how ever long it takes to be treated
As an Irish man working for a subcontractor on the project. I can tell you, a lack of skilled professionals on the job, a lack of prior planning before taking up any task, and clashes between contractors meaning some jobs have to be done or returned to two to three times. These are just the tip of the iceberg with the job. BAM frequently close down sections of the hospital as "finished" forcing contractors due to go to those areas on behalf of mechanical or electrical, to waste a day or two gaining access to the area. Whole job is a hoax, If someone isn't getting a giant back hand of money out of that job, then someone's doing it wrong because all the signs are there.
Being Irish, what annoys me about this hospital is that it has been built where it is, why couldn't something of this scale be put in the centre of the country, so it's more accessible for the nation, somewhere like Athlone or something
Exactly. But nothing is ever logical or straightforward in this country. The NCH is an embarrassment. But if nothing else, Bam should never be given another job in thus country. I'd love to see them try this if they were building something for Elon Musk or Ineos. Price agreed on tender. Huge penalties for not completing on time. A joke of an organisation, aided by a joke government
The idea was that its on the Luas line so everybody can get a bus to Dublin and get to it using public transport. I wouldn't know how to get from cork to Athlone. it also has to be next to a major hospital for all the emergency transfers and to reduce operation costs. So it was either a choice between James or tallagh and tallagh has the psychiatric ward .
@mispelling Galway? Possibly the worst designed City in Europe (in terms of road infrastructure)? I should know, I work there. But I wouldn't go next or near the place if I didn't have to 🤣
@@richardjones2811 that's what I was thinking. It will be full of foreigners. In the beds and working in it. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Thank you Irish tax payers and corrupt/incompetent politicians & civil servants
they talked about it for about 40 years before it started being built , some of the children from that time will be old age pensioners before its finished
The choice of site came down to shortlist between 2 locations. The moment they ignored the greenfield site in a more affordable area with better access this disaster was predicable in it's path 😡. I was annoyed at the time, now it's just beyond expressing. Thanks for excellent article.
Every state project in Ireland goes over budget and is delayed. The 3 layers of administration in the health service means 60% of the budget is spent there instead of health provision. A&E departments were closed in county hospitals in order to create centres of excellence but most not finished or started, placing the burden on regional hospitals, hence the waiting times . They were at capacity levels already. 2 hospitals to be built in Galway and Dublin are held in judicial reviews for 10 years after planning was approved. As for physiatric health, the must underfunded of all . The fact that a young woman died of preventive sepsis in a limerick regional hospital shows how bad things are. For those unfamiliar with this issue, look to history of health care in Ireland over the last 25 years.
As an Irish person, thats a hard pill to swallow. We would talk about this around the lunch table at work and say the money spent on this project could have built 5 hospitals nationally.
@@jimbannigan2139to be fair it’s not just the politicians. It’s the unseen civil servants that get away with all these decisions with no accountability or consequences.
It probably would have made more sense to build a number of regional centers instead of one giant facility. And they could have completed them in less than 50 years.
More like incompetence right from the off. Nobody on the "client" side really understood what they were building when they looked at the plans. Seems they didn't understand the very expensive scale models either. So the contractor quotes on the design as specified, and the client keeps altering the basic design because they finally understand the flaws while the project is underway. Costs spiral, delivery dates slip and the crew building the thing lose heart because they know some dick will tell them to rip out what they did last week and start again, every sodding week.
@@rorykeegan1895 It's incompetence, in a corrupt way. There are dozens and dozens and dozens of highly qualified "golden circle" type people (engineers, solicitors, professors, ex civil servants, "business men" - we need their keen acument so much) sitting on boards and committees over-seeing this stuff, and being handsomely paid for it. And the longer this goes on, the more they get paid. Gravy train!
Currently on a 14 month waiting list for a neurology consultation here in ireland. Our relaxed attitude and forgiving approach to these things is killing us.
Wow, and here I've been thinking New Zealand was bad in terms of hospital wait times, construction delays b/c of government consent procedures, and bad public transport--Ireland makes NZ look good! 😞
To truly understand the problem Simon needs to do a video on Irelands new €336k bicycle shelter or perhaps how we built a port tunnel to allow big heavy HGVs to bypass the city centre but... well... we built it too small for the biggest HGVs to fit into it
I seem to remember that a rich private sector man offered to build a children's hospital for free in a green field site on the outskirts of the city, where it would've been more accessible to everyone who doesn't live in south Dublin inner city. He was refused point blank.
Ireland: the most corrupt county in the western world. The working class pay Socialist taxes but for libertarian public services. A haven for the wealthy where you can hide billions but the homelessness in plain sight. A country that funds millions to advertise tourism in ireland, with not enough hotels for visitors to stay in. Our wee nation was brought to its knees because too many houses were built, it is with a sense of irony we’re back on our knees because we now have too few. A country that had a better rail network in 1924 than it does in 2024. Bobby sands once said the laughter of our children would be our revenge, sadly they’re waiting for a bed instead.
Would you perhaps consider looking into something called the ‘Green Line’ in Calgary Alberta Canada? A proposed light rapid transit (tram) rail line that, if built, could possibly be the most expensive rail line ever built. Recently cancelled due to cost over runs, it is expected to cost 2.1 billion dollars (Canadian), just to abondone it and compensate builders for signed contracts, now cancelled.
Romania here. The same type of hospital cost 53 million euros. Of course, without the involvement of the state. Everything was managed by an NGO from private donations
To add insult to injury... The Government had several other sites to build that hospital. Hell one was about a massive site offered for FREE ! No they put it in the MOST expensive ost code in Ireland!!
Just incase anyone had any doubt whatsoever that GDP is meaningless to how good living standards are. Ireland in the highest ranked county by gdp yet we have a health care system worse than Kenya and workers are emigrating because they can't afford to live in their own county. Absolutely shameful and unless we completely overthrow the government it doesn't look like there's an end in sight.
You should see how many people from Ireland (and the UK) are arriving in Australia. It's astounding. You see so many people walking down the street who have clearly only arrived within the last few months.
@@tdb7992 More will come. I'm a Brit so can't speak for the state of things in Ireland, but here in the UK we just keep getting one incompetent government after another, running this country down. I'm also hoping to get out of here and immigrate before it's too late and countries like Australia start closing their doors on us.
The economist that came up with GDP was explicitly against it being used by itself to draw any conclusions. It was supposed to be part of a suite of analysis tools. And yet here we are. It's almost as if politicians don't want to listen to experts. Until it makes them look good.
It should have been built on the many greenfield sites out beside Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown not in the already bottlenecked kip that is James' Hospital. That's the real reason why the project is screwed
Unfortunatly Ireland has long had a problem with Government officials making "deals" with contractors behind the curtains. Even a simple bike shed on Governement property was billed at over 300k by a contractor who was a contributor to a member of governments election campaign. The people voted out the previous government because of similiar issues but they regained power by forming a coalition with a smaller party.
The late Margaret Thatcher used to say that only the private sector can deliver, I think she is wrong. The initial cost was in the region of €650 million, now its over €2.4 billion, and still no completion date, scandalous!.
Think she was wrong.. she bloody well was wrong. When capitalism turns into a capitalist monopoly, how can it be any different from a state monopoly. The choice isn't there
Ireland was in a bad state post colonialism (1920’s). Joining the EU dragged it gradually to prosperity culminating in the Celtic Tiger (2000’s) Now, it is racked by extraordinarily incompetent politicians and civil servants. Political corruption is endemic. No accountability and little transparency is a major problem. Not connected, but alas, it ought to be mentioned; buying a house is out of reach for regular people in Ireland. Mothers with children are sleeping rough on the streets. It is reasonable to discuss since health care is absent and house prices are unaffordable whether the country can accept 10,000 of immigrants. They need and deserve healthcare as well. Ireland’s politicians need desperately to focus on improving the situation for poor people in Ireland.
There was no “colonialism”. Ireland was part of the UK and had Home Rule ready and waiting for the end of WW1. Instead, hotheads fomented first revolution then civil war and thousands died. The result is a divided island, with the North still in the UK and the Republic a vassal state of the EU. Morally and spiritually it’s gone down the toilet.
@@Krav_Swaga I’ll correct that; homeless mothers and children. Also children should not be sleeping on benches in police’s stations. Do you think, like I do, that there a problem?
Image living next to this monstrosity, no more sunlight. Ireland isn’t very sunny, but living in the shadow of this building must be sickening. It seems so out of place, judging from this video. Edit: no parking garage? WTF I feel sorry for the neighborhood for all that traffic, but how can you expect everybody to get there by public transport or taxis?
Ireland tends to build large venues capable of holding thousands and thousands of people and never include any parking. The argument? Building any parking spaces would only encourage traffic, so by not providing them, the problem solves itself. No, this is not a joke, it is a conscious decision by planners to minimise the impact of large developments.
Ireland is a joke. No parking for a paediatric hospital and a 12 hour emergency wait. How will parents and their children take the bus back home at 3am?
@@jochenstacker7448 Sounds like our green politicians here in Amsterdam. Raise the price of parking and parking permits. Remove parking places (which immediately get filled up with old abandoned bikes). And expect that the people suddenly don’t need their cars anymore. They don’t work for the people, but against them. And somehow people still elect them……
The alternative site (Blanchardstown Connolly) was touching/adjacent to a large motorway, on a large open green area, with a large suburban hospital already built there. Perfect for construction. And in a very large suburb, with plenty of mid-price housing. And nearby rail facilities. And potential for helicopter operations (which the chosen site wont be capable of). And the land would be way cheaper. With lower traffic density. But no.
Thank you for having covered this. Many people will put this down to a range of issues but the ultimate issue is contractor greed and the desire of middlemen to profit from any and all projects. Hospitals are state responsibilities. Every cent spent on a government project must be fret over and no contract company should see their net worth grow at a faster rate than inflation based on the income from hospital construction.
I’m glad this is getting worldwide attention. Government and both BAM are a shambles and deserve every bit of critic thrown at them. BAM not even building one room to snuff is appalling. But guess it’s okay for them since it’s means big money and only children to suffer.
Unfortunately in Ireland we have school children running sorry ruinning or country. The vast majority in the Dail wouldnt be qualified enough to manage the fruit and veg section in Dunnes Stores.
Irish here - contrary to the statistics cited (though only in my admittedly anecdotal experience), the Irish public is acutely aware of how poorly run our health service is
@@nigelflood7074 They are all as bad. I'd vote for SF but they have no other plans except for getting the six counties back. Aontu will never be big enough to make a difference and the Greens....
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Please do the Dail bike shed not a megaproject but it did cost 335 000 euros for a basic bike shelter for 40 bikes
Shame?? Its a new hospital for children that is badly needed, no shame in that, the only problem is that a greedy builder keeps uping the price
Same happened when Google and other multinationals built their EU HQ's in Dublin. Fancy office building were built but no one bothered to build any accommodation for the staff that would work there.
I bet my left nut that this is the result of the Irish gov well known head long march into WOKENESS = make everything worse than it need's to be
It was never about building the best hospital for children. All these projects are only about setting up a syphon of public funds to the private sector and round about to the politicians and their friends pockets.
As a Irish man who lives in Dublin, can I congratulate you on your excellent research and reporting on this building farce. To think that this is going to cost more that the Burj Khalif and for what we are getting, beggars belief.
If they didn't include a sewage system and used slaves to build it like they did for the Burj Khalifa they could've saved a decent bit of cash
@@Hujhjgffw dudes such a racist he thinks expats are literal slaves. Burj Khalifa have been connected to the sewage system for many years now. but basic facts won't stop yo from saying your racism against arabs.
I argued with a guy on Reddit who said he could understand why it cost so much and that hospitals are 'complicated' structures. I made the point that it's over half the cost of the new WTC, which is almost 1800 feet tall and is in downtown Manhattan. Our electorate are fcking idiots.
I will never vote for Fine Geal again since Leo was leader. They are a joke. How was this not built outside of the city I will never know!
He doesn't research anything. He's sent scripts and reads the...
There is another megaproject here in Ireland.
They spend 300k euros to build a shed for bicycles.
And the shed was not constructed correctly so it does not protect the bicycle from the rain.
@@testgio7 Exactly. had the builders waited 5 minutes, they would've found out which way the rain, wind, snow blows. 🙄😞
Give me 10.000€ and I'll build you a fully enclosed bike shed in a week.
But it protected the contractors and the bureaucrats 😊
Well said my friend 👍
Not to mention the long awaited Dublin metro. We are a laughing stock in terms of basic public necessities in comparison to the rest of Western Europe
As a Dutch citizen, the moment I heard the development company BAM I got chills. There have been multiple collapses and unsafe government buildings, condemned buildings and endless delays because of BAM in the Netherlands.
Hi from Ireland. I have heard of problems relating to BAM developed projects in the past but not looked too much into it. Can't wait for the future bullshit that's going to come to light here. Not in a good way though.
Thats really interesting - obviously BAM have previous form.
It's not what you know It's who you know world unfortunately
Jesus now when it’s finally complete it’s going to fall down too 🤦🏻♀️ or is it cladding and will go up in flames, either way typical
"The Dutch authorities' investigation into BAM International is centered on potential financial irregularities in some completed projects. The investigation, conducted by the Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service and the Public Prosecutions Office, involved a raid on BAM’s offices in Gouda. Although BAM International has fully cooperated, the company has not disclosed specific details of the allegations, and no final outcomes have been publicly reported so far. BAM has since wound down its international operations due to a lack of positive prospects"
"in incidents related to structural faults. One notable case was the collapse of a parking garage at Eindhoven Airport in 2017. Subcontractors had warned BAM about visible cracks two months before the collapse, but these were initially dismissed as aesthetic rather than structural issues."
There is zero accountability in the public service in Ireland. The Health Service Executive (HSE) is the epitome of incompetence. Inefficiency and lack of accountability. Patients are dying on the floors of public health hospitals and no one is being held accountable. It’s a national disgrace. Unfortunately it’s not just healthcare, it’s in all areas of the public sector.
Exactly. Accountability. It always comes back to that one word. We get the politicians we deserve.
Calm down. Stop spreading misinformation.
Well, this country is run exclusively on nepotism ever since… ever.
@@ohnoitisnt666 it really isn't misinformation the HSE is inept and corrupt
Same with the cannabis decriminalisation, they were told by citizens assembly to do it yet they keep dilating and posponing as they have more deeper interests than public health
Absolutely unreal, unbelievable. Hospital should never have been built there. Should have been built just outside of the M50 motorway to facilitate all the people of Ireland travelling to Dublin, not having to go into city centre. The waste of money is absolutely unreal and nobody is held accountable. Last month an outdoor bicycle shelter for 18 bikes built in government building for €335,000. Unreal and unbelievable, but it's true.
Couldn't be put outside of the M50. There will be consultants working in the hospital and teaching in the universities, and nurses etc. will be training in this hospital and attending university so it wouldn't be possible for them to travel to outside the M50 and still make it back for lectures in the likes of Trinity and UCD. Also, the largest population in the country is in Dublin City center so they needed to build 'a children's hospital' here, but not a national children's hospital. There should have been one built in Dublin that was half this size, in a location that was easily accessible but road and public transport and they should also have built 2 smaller ones in Cork close to UCC and Galway close to UCG.
So many of the children’s hospitals in Dublin are in such difficult places it get to, it’s such a nightmare!
It's in the right spot as there are no cancer services in the new hospital. The amount of kids who get cancer in Ireland is very low. The plan is to use the cancer services of St James's hospital.
Thank you for your report. The whole project was corrupt from the start, location, location, location. The hospital should have been built on an easer to access site, somewhere around the m50(main road around the city), accessible to people outside of the city and inside of the city. There would have been little planning permission issues. But now I will have to get onto a bus or tram with a sick child for 2 hours because there is no parking and the public transport isn't good enough for this. Basic basic basic design and planning. Who is accountable? What are our so called leaders doing?
Even when the doors are opened it will not work. I am so disappointed. Why do I bother to pay taxes?😢
@@chrisfox7 that's bs
As a person who works in one of the current children hospitals in dublin, this new hospital is of no use, the current plan is to shift the two working children hospitals to the NCH and close the old ones, so in practicality they are not adding any new beds in the system, in fact the total number of beds in the NCH is even less than the current hospitals. Combined that with the location, parking and transport issues its going to be a disaster.
Interesting. I didn't know this.
Are they not building 3000 beds?
@@giggergigger1 definitely not lol, 380 inpatient beds and 93 days beds only.
@@Zohaib2211 I heard them say 3000 beds on tee and wondered if they meant 300!!!
@@giggergigger13000 rooms. Not bedrooms
From Ireland, with love, thank you for doing this Simon. Greatly appreciated
For all the difference it will make. Those fools in the Dail will still throw good money after bad into this monument to stupidity.
Regards from Cork.
Yes,its embarrassing....Irish politicians are amongst the most short sighted out there....
@@agent_meister477it a Dublin monument ...vit gúinesse world record anyway😂😂😂
I'm Irish and can tell you this type of incompetence and corruption has been going on for generations. By the time it opens it will be out dated and not fit for purpose.
Didn't you guys sell your oil rights to a US company too ?
@@simonbrown7455 *our government did, yeah. They were also FORCED to accept €10 billion from Apple as well.
That's what happens when you put bumpkins in charge and give them billions of euros in tax haven money (and yes, I am Irish too).
Irish here. Until the day comes when civil servants suffer severe consequences for these mistakes, they will continue to happen. We need to see careers ended, pensions torn up and even criminal charges if the law has been broken.
If we didn't imprison the bankers for what they caused in 2008, we will definitely not go after civil servants. Depressing, I know.😢
It's the politicians who are making bank or getting favours. Paschal Donohue signs off on all of this, this month he was awarded the freedom of London City. Wakey wakey.
👍
I been saying this for years and I feel that potentially could have a case to bring to sue the government
Hear hear, civil servants are unfireable, this is incompatible in a democracy, accountability has to be the paramount vertical to measure work reviews. People must be held accountable, warned and fired when needed, just like any other job.
i work in ireland with the irish govt and health service and its genuinely difficult to say this is surprising. they are the most unorganized, incompetant, and underqualified group of people i have ever witnessed.
Like I say to a lot of people -I'm part Irish- Live up to a standard not down to a stereotype
Well clearly your work hasn't helped.
@@liamfoley9614Piss off Liam 👍
@@liamfoley9614 🤣🤣
plus, if it's so bad and they're so bad you can go to Australia maybe? What county are you from? What is it like in your country? Why did you leave there? I'm not saying there is not truth in your assessment I'm sure there is but when you say "they are" you are now equating ALL the people... The problem is not the Irish people in general it's those that are in charge that never get called out or exposed.
As an Irish citizen, the research done on the different issues raised in this video is impressive and accurate.
Bet u will still vote establishment
FFG forever!
@@willie8976 Who are you voting for? Some illiterate, unemployed mouth-breathing _Ireland is full_ gobshite by the sounds of it
@@willie8976 it's all very well saying that current government isn't addressing the issues but who do you think can, within the currently available funds?
@fmoore1410 ill be voting ifp
But yet the politicians here in Ireland will tell you they are not corrupt. Just today they announced there will be another delay.
And people will vote for them anyway... generations of people just voting for the party their family votes for, regardless of who's in charge or what they do
Or they'll find a way to blame the UK for their own failures.
Don't you just love politicians?
Keep Voting for the S0cialist useless and incompetents.
@@RiposteBK I'm always depressed when I hear about the battle between the parties at the top. One loses a couple seats, the other gains a couple... Nothing changes.
@@joshuaclaxton2565 Or the "Far Right"!!!
Yep we Irish love this kinda deal, we buy trains that wont fit our stations, printers that also don't fit where intended, build bike racks that cost the same as a house, so why build four hospitals when we could have one for the price of four?
dont forget your electric buses! and plenty of them...
Don't forget 2nd hand tunnels that are too short for larger lorries.
As an Irish citizen its good to see you cover this Simon. An absolute insult to the irish taxpayer. Other countries need to see how corrupt this country is. Never mind the 'richest, fastest growing country in Europe' BS. The ordinary irish citizen struggles to make ends meet.
There's very little corruption it's just incompetence
BAM should never get another public contract ever again. Absolute scumbags
BAM are getting all the blame for this, but it all went downhill when the design team (architect, consultant and quantity surveyors) put together a very poor tender package. BAM, SISK and Walls (I think) all tendered for it with prices between €950m and €1.2b. They all knew that there was going to be huge money made on this because of the massive discrepancies between the design and the bill of quantities document. This is standard for government projects and it won't change unless the blame is put on the right people and they are held to account. BDO Architects, ARUP & OCSC Consulting engineers and Bruce Shaw quantity surveyors get no coverage and they have been involved from planning stage. Also, the dept. of health may have considered that the project would not have received government funding and may not have gone ahead if they actually put a correct budget together and it showed a predicted price of closer to €2b rather than €1b so they may have under valued their business case. It didn't matter who got the construction contract, the outcome would have been the same.
It was always gonna be a big feck up. By the time they got around to it they were surprised, apparently that the costs had raised. Instead of selling the expensive land in Dublin and moving to a green field site outside Dublin they decided to build there. In Dublin.. To serve the entire country.. And They (Government) din't seem to think they were wrong. Zero accountability, zero consideration for the needs of the people.
it's a Dublin Centric government. I'm laughing at them.
Corruption of the highest order
also the consultants - many now retired refused to work out on M50.. we could have built 3 of these (Cork and Galway) by the time this opens ;/
It should be built in the Midlands.
@@Rokkery75nobody wants to live in the midlands tbh. Should have been built in Wicklow along the motorway.
I live in Ireland and I don't know a single person who is happy with our health service. We have to wait a YEAR to see a consultant for example. Waiting lists are ridiculous.
Yet election after election Fianna Fail and Fine Gael power home, helped by our lax media who are in co-hoots 🤷🏻♂️
And you pay for it, I live in Ireland too as a Brit I will say I miss the NHS for sure.
These opinion polls are rubbish
Or any service for that matter.
2 to 3 weeks waiting for a local GP appointment, same, if not longer for a dentist. I'm waiting 11 weeks for the results on an important scan. I rang the hospital 2 wks ago to see what the delay was, I couldn't get an English speaking person who understood my enquires , I was passed from dept to dept. I eventually just gave up.
The stupid thing is, the day, I was in for the scan, there were 10 nurses, & 3 doctors standing around, laughing, joking, looking at charts, walking around with charts, organising their wkend. And this was the assesment dept. When the kitchen / catering staff came through, the staff were the first to be looked after. I could go on & on, but I won't. Irish health system is definitely not for the Irish people. I would say "ask any Irish Nurse", but there isn't any, anymore.
As an irishman i'm appalled at the sheer volume of waste in this country, before the planning of this giant waste of money the then government was offered a complety free brown field property which an irish building contractor would deliver a larger building for less than 280 million euros which may have ended up being 400 ish..which would also have saved the entire country that doesnt live in dublin having to drive through the city to use the hospital, the planning system in this country is a joke of giant proportions just like the project to build this stupid lump of a building.
"The planning system in this country is a joke of monumental proportions" -- starting with "Children have been dying for years, they're dying now, and they will continue to die for the next number of years - but thank Kerrist, the 'dozers are ready to go in"... NIMBYs×: "(Whingey voice) But it's too _hi~iigh!_ It don't _look nice!_ " Planning Authorities: "Oh! Why did no~one say? Well, that's it, lads - we don't care _how_ many hundreds of millions sunk costs! You're just going to have to drop everything and find another site for your hospital!" And thus, not a sod of earth turned for _another_ several years!
This the country btw, that had to be taken to court by Europe to make them accept the €13 _billion_ in taxes that Apple were trying to give them, albeit with predictable ill~grace! (The final judgement, after a decade in the courts, came through the other day.)
×'NIMBY' - 'Not In My Back Yard'.
@@richiehoyt8487what's with the × by the NIMBY?
@@arthas640 GOBSHITE
@@arthas640 I was using it in place of an asterisk (**) You start messing around with them boys, next thing, if you're not careful, you end up with half your comment in BOLD!*
@@richiehoyt8487 I see. I noticed it at the beginning and then end and thought maybe it had some other meaning I was missing
Corruption in Ireland became big time with Haughey (late 1970s).
Impunity and lack of accountability seems to go back a long way, possibly since independence in the 1920s-how many bishops, priests or nuns did time after the industrial levels of child abuse emerged? How many politicians went down after the mass corruption under Haughey was exposed?
Yeah blame the people from 50 years ago 😑😑
There's very little corruption it's just incompetence
Fantastic video Simon. Very well researched and even as an Irishman who knows how bad the Healthcare system is I was shocked by some of the figures from the video. Next do our €300,000 bike shed at our Government building.
Refreshing to see a video on Ireland that takes the nuances that we have into account
I love my country. But this is one of the big problems we have as a nation: Too many people are happy to wink at corruption instead of insisting that heads roll. There can be no doubt among thinking people that Bertie Ahern, for example, engaged in all kinds of dodgy deals that we should be furious about. Yet a lot people will still say they like him, even with this knowledge. The reaction is something like, "Yeah, he was a sly devil alright!" Instead of "We need to lock people like that up."
Dee Forbes is someone else who should have been sent to prison. Imagine any other country where the state broadcasters CEO squanders millions of taxpayers euro in backhanded payments hidden from officials. Then when Forbes was confronted with the evidence she hastily resigned, pulled out a sick note, and suddenly is unable to ever face even appearing in front of a committee about the money?
Dee Forbes should be in prison. This should have warranted a riot.
Sadly "cute whoorism" is alive and well in Ireland; that hospital has lined the pockets of contractors, builders, suppliers and officials. It's an execrable waste of time and money. Nobody who works in the two children's' hospitals think it is in anyway going to alleviate their workload or serve the public any better when those two hospitals are amalgamated into this waste of space.
When people say they 'love Ireland', I really don't know what they even mean anymore. There is so much wrong with our country. we can't just always fall back on 'the craic' as a reason to love it.
@collydub1987 Can't even fall back on the 'Craic' these days. What fucking craic is there to be had when a weekend in Dublin costs the same as a week in fucking Spain?
Want to socialise by drinking? Fuck you a single drink costs €6.
Want to go see a rugby match/concert/festival? Fuck you tickets cost €150+.
Want to smoke some weed and have a nice chill time? Fuck you, straight to court so we can waste thousands of euros over €10 of plant matter and boost crime stats.
Want to move up to Dublin to start your new career after finishing college? Fuck you, your rent is now 2/3rds of your income, hope you like buttered bread for each meal of the day!
Want to maybe one day own a home by waiting for your parents to eventually die? Fuck you, you live in Donegal and the house will have crumbled to dust long before you inherit it.
Wtf is there to love anymore ?
Something has went very wrong when a GP annual salary wouldn't be enough for you to get a mortgage in Dublin. How can that be possible? Something rotten is going on .
The "golden circle" in Ireland creaming off the money for themselves, by gravy trains (look how many committees of experts there are getting paid nicely to "oversee" the children's hospital) and by plain grift.
Except they're taking it so far these days they might actually economically collapse the country.
BAM!....and the money is gone!
That's why they are called BAM. Wham bam thank you mam!
👍🏻😅
The children's hospital near me in Melbourne (Australia, not the US one) as a three-storey fish tank and a meerkat enclosure. It's amazing. I love that they put those in for the sick kids. In all honesty it seems like every doctor and nurse in Ireland, the UK and New Zealand is currently moving to Australia to work. I've never seen such a massive wave of foreign health professionals all arriving at once.
Thank you for covering this debacle. As a nurse in Ireland I can say it’s no surprise. In the last ten years the HSE has become filled with experts and managers. Yet never has care been so slow, so poor and a desicion about almost anything next to impossible to achieve.
Irish children with scoliosis are waiting years for vital surgery. Sixteen year old Aoife Johnson died waiting over 13 hours in Limerick hospital for antibiotics while her parents begged for help, the report redacted the names of the consultants. Children's minister Roderic O'Gorman used GDPR as an excuse to delete files he was sent on the abuse of children in state care. But the Irish govt are patting themselves on the back for bringing children from Gaza to Ireland for medical treatment, and providing rapid-build modular housing estates on state land for Ukrainians (they spent €1m a month on their PETS)
People are very unhappy that the govt can spend billions on their policies that get international attention (plus over €335k on their bike shelter), but are a disaster on housing, health, services, etc. that impact people's lives. There are protests against the government, which the govt has blamed on 'far right racists' stoking division
My parents are from Dub. I can remember going there in the 70's and without question it's been the worst poverty I've ever seen first hand. All the slums got knocked down but the corruption is just the same, just has less of a religious component it seems.
@@musicilike69 Dublin had the worst slums in Europe in the past, but poverty was widespread. My father grew up in a rural area with no electricity, no indoor plumbing, and walked miles to school in his bare feet as his family couldn't even afford a pair of shoes for their children. As did everyone else he knew. His brother started work in a coal mine at the age of 15. His father fought the Black & Tans
My cousin remembers getting running water at home for the first time at the age of seven (he's now in his late forties). Now I have two sons in college, one in Galway, whose friend pays €600 a month for a room shared with two other lads. That's €1800 a month per ROOM. I don't know how many people share the bathroom and kitchen
But, as we've recently discovered, it turns out that the Irish government CAN provide brand new rapid-build modular homes on state land for families in need - just not Irish families. They lecture the Irish people about how privileged they are to live in their own country - a country built up from poverty by our parents, and fought for by our grandparents.
And now our children are lucky if they can find a bed to sleep in that they pay through the nose for, while our taxes pay for the brand new free house for a non-Irish family
Anyone still voting for FF, FG, or the Greens and believing that the anger in working class communities is because of 'racism' must be living in an ivory tower
They must have been too guilt-ridden when TD Catherine Murphy said the Irish had white privilege "throughout their oppression" to think that the Ukrainians (with their free brand-new houses, free healthcare, their €1m a month spent on pets, their trips back home for dental treatment because the waiting lists in Ireland were too long!) are no less white than the Irish families whose loved-ones died from hunger and who held wakes for their children emigrating on coffin ships because even if they didn't die on the way they would never see their home or families again
I'm in agreement with eyerything you've said. What depresses me are the Irish voters who will vote back in the same jokers at the next election
Our government have been corrupt for as long as we have been a nation. Political power in Ireland is akin to the underhanded dealings we would tuttut from abroad. But blaming Ukrainians, or blaming injured kids from Gaza is lazy and exactly what the government want. If people believe that foreigners and migrants are the problem then it takes focus off the real reason we have housing issues and health care issues and over crowded schools.... because our elected government is an old boys club.... once they've lined their own pockets that's all that matters.
Do everyone a favour and actually protest the governments incompetence because all I see anymore is that the Irish are turning into unwelcoming, racist, bigoted mobs that blame everything on 'others'. Your anger is misplaced.
Your comments are absolutely spot on. Our politicians are obsessed with their own careers and pensions and only interested in how Ireland is viewed from abroad. I have never been so convinced that our public representatives have no interest in Irish people and the reality of life in Ireland. Very depressing.
The biggest issue with this hospital is the site location. Without being experts, everyone knew from the outset that it was built in the wrong location. The stipulation was that it needed to be co-located with a full service adult hospital, so it was wedged into this existing site next to St James Hospital near the city centre. It will be impossible to access for staff and patients. The ideal site was about on the outskirts (10k away) in Blanchardstown, on the M50 ring road, and loads of available space for building. They would have needed to upgrade the adjacent hospital but in their infinite wisdom, thought this was not a good idea. It’s mind boggling to think of why this was not the logical choice, when the dog on the street knew it was. They could have built the Children’s hospital and 3 adult hospitals for what they have spent. Ireland is littered with mind boggling construction decisions, from the erection of pelican crossings to Children’s hospitals. It’s horrendous.
A relative of mine offered them a free site for the hospital just outside the M50 on the N2.
Exactly. St James is in a congested enough area already. I dread to think what is going to be like when the NCH opens. No new travel infrastructure is planned as far as I know.
My first thought would be that what ever line of corrupt money swindling they had planned will only work if they do it this way.
@@Mark.R_ was that Noel Smith ? I remember that .. he was going to build the hospital for the government for if I remember correctly 250 M cost price.
It’s a good thing we didn’t let the dogs in the street choose the location in that case.
You’re thinking in a 20th century way, we don’t want people to arrive by car. National facilities need to be centrally located beside public transport not next to a congested motorway.
One item that was missed - every government minister/ member of parliament that has touched this project has only been promoted higher in politics. The more you fail, the more you rise in Irish politics.
That's the same everywhere, politicians only fail upward.
It's called the Peter Principle - you rise to your level of greatest incompetence.
huh maybe we should punish such a system... haha jk jk that would be illegal o.0
We have the same problem here in the US…😅
Fail upwards is the motto in the Dáil and in RTÈ.
As an Irish man, thank you for covering this. It's a pity our national media doesn't put the same effort into calling out these cowboys and bluffers.
Denmark is building two mega hospitals, and the process is similar to what Ireland is going through, with a bloated budget, deadlines keep being pushed back, construction failures and features of the hospitals being canceled from the projects. The Danish healthcare system is also under pressure, and need the new hospitals. Oh, there also seem to be no accountability .. like at all.
Perhaps mega hospitals aren't all they're cracked up to be.
In 2022 there were reportedly more than 160,000 unoccupied homes in Ireland. There is not an issue with a lack of housing. There is a problem with widespread corruption and privatisation from a government, most of whom are landlords. Roughly 13 homes per homeless persons. See our recent bike shelter which was billed for over €300,000 which was no more than a lean to shelter with a capacity of about 18 bicycles.
These consist primarily of Old husks that will require extremely extensive renovation, investment properties and luxury apartments.
The bigger issue is the refusal of banks to give out loans at a reasonable rate on reasonable terms and the fact there are no laws against institutional investors and foreign individuals buying and owning property.
Supply shortfalls are nonsense it's the extreme demand created by the parties I previously mentioned and the pent up demand from younger and middle aged generations of Irish people that is driving prices higher.
Also an bord pleanala fuck them
👏👏👏👏👏 👍👍 They (the government) are not saying a word about that, hoping the Irish people will eventually forget about it. FFS, even our teaboy can't find who signed off on it. But, can find a young chap waving an Irish flag in a crowd of thousands 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂. "JAYSUSSSSS"
Badly designed too, the bikes get wet
@@cemu1065they know who signed off on it that just don't want us to know who 😂😂
Those 160,000 vacant homes in Ireland remain private property. If we want to make use of them, we must locate the owners and present them with an offer. The government has no right to infringe on private property, nor should private owners be held accountable for the government's failures. Probate lawyers can help identify the registered owners-some may have moved abroad, others may be unaware, and some may lack the funds to renovate. The responsibility for the housing and health crisis lies solely with the corrupt and incompetent government as you have correctly mentioned. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, have collectively held power for almost a 100 years and now are working together as one entity. Yup, The €335,000 bike shelter is a national disgrace, but unfortunately, I don't believe anything will change. We have no effective opposition party. This renders us effectively a dictatorship.
The effects of brown envelopes and racing tents
Simon & Team, thank you so much for covering this disaster of project, I really hope this helps get more international attention on it as the current Irish Government cares much more about their international image and listening to Brussels/Washington than about the standard of living for our citizens.
It's the biggest infrastructure failings in the history of the state but it's sadly not the only one, we also currently have a equally disastrous Metro System that is suppose to have been being built for decades and several other problems with vital infrastructure such as Dublin Airport.
I've been in Irish and Brazilian hospitals and the Brazilian experience was much more pleasant. I'm Irish and ashamed of our health system. Its a disgrace.
The first thing i learned when i came to ireland 8 years ago from the Netherlands is that nothing really works in this country. There is nothing easier then to wake up in the morning knowing that it's going to rain today and that you can't rely on anything here.
And yet.you stayed here!
My sister has a construction company in the west of Ireland, every new build is held up by a local complaining. For example, an 8 new house development on a street with 4 or 5 derelict houses being held up by six people due to lack of parking when at least one of them, a relative, has no car. It shouldn't be possible to block construction for 2 years for €50, make it a grand or two which the person gets back if their complaints are upheld which they lose if their complaints are baseless. It's easy to blame politicians, construction companies when there's a lot of everyday people doing the blocking because to quote my relative... over her dead body will there be houses built across from her.
I might be wrong, but can't people who don't even live near the area object planning?
@M_S_K420 Even if not the planning board is tiny and need to investigate each case.
NIMBY strikes again and again...
@@M_S_K420yup it’s true. Happens in the west where I live all the time. The planning system is a joke
Sounds about right, NIMBY'ism is way too powerful in Ireland
Thanks for bringing this to international attention
Glad this is being brought to light
Ireland is split between those who have all they want when they want, to those who strive to look like they have it all, and finally to those who have very little and can't even imagine having the necessary. Politicians and there "friends" have deeply injured this countries possibilities... it's tragic!
My daughter already attends the existing St James Connolly hospital and parking can be a nightmare and we have to travel there from the country so why they placed it in the city centre baffles me beyond belief. Even if your from Dublin it's awkward to get to.
Also we have been in A@E a few times recently and 12/13 hours is optimistic. It's more 24 hours in my experience.
What I would add though is that the consultants we attend are top class and have been brilliant to us.
12 hour emergency wait time is abhorrent. 2 hours is too much in my opinion. I think they've forgotten what emergency means
People have died in A & E waiting. You know elderly, and young or meek people.
We haven't seen the biggest crisis with this wait until the try to staff it. Where are they going to live tents.
If there is no staff, there is no staff. :(
never walk into A&E here in Ireland,my partner got knocked down once,when I questioned why it was taking so long for a doctor to see him I was told and I kid you not, "him coming here by himself is like an assessment in itself....then if you do call an ambulance you could also be waiting for hours...
and no he was far from ok...he wasn't very responsive,both legs were purple and black, he could not walk,he was breathing all funny he was steaming like a kettle(never seen that in my life)like just steam coming off his body, and he did not just turn up alone,I brought him...
12 hours Jesus there must have been a doctor working that day. I spent 16 hours in Naas A&E with a broken wrist. Got in at 10 am and saw a doctor at 2am that night. Kip
So much of Irelands problems comes down to housing, it doesn't matter how good the pay is if all you are doing working for your landlord.
And yet there's loads of empty office building in south Dublin. An entire building just gone up at Charlemont LUAS station and half of Central Park is stil empty despite being finished 13 years ago. All new housing is completely unaffordable for the majority of the population and those that own the estates reside in tax havens like Luxembourg. My 'landlord' to which my partner and I pay almost 2.5k EUR a month for a small one bed flat in super south Dublin is a company from there. It's a total disgrace.
@@lukemwill99 And your 'Mom & Pop' type landlords - with very rare honourable exceptions - are weird and creepy, psychopathic, thieving scrooges who can barely write their own name, but have three sets of accounts per dwelling - one for the Dept. of Social & Family Affairs, one for the Inland Revenue, and then the third - the _real_ ones...
Home ownership in Ireland is 66%. That is slightly higher than in a the UK or US.
@@larzlarz1140 The main problem in Ireland is not the level of home ownership, but that virtually no housing has been built since the financial collapse and what little has been built has been bought up wholesale by property companies for the rental market. With a rapidly growing population, due to immigration, there is a serious shortage of accommodation of all types. The country needs 250,000 housing units now to meet the existing demand. The problem is far beyond home ownership statistics in UK or US.
Irish people who have good jobs here are leaving to live and work abroad because of the housing situation. This is 100% a politician made problem.
@@dogstar8027 The are still some 100,000 empty houses across The South atm.
Dear god - had no idea it was that bad , well done Simon for highlighting this "project" as well as our incompetent politicians.
In Perth (Aus) we outdid Ireland. We managed to install Asbestos in our new Children's Hospital, despite it being banned in Australia for new constructions for 30+ years.
Not to be outdone by any future pretenders, there was also lead in the drinking water supply inside the hospital (i.e. the lead contamination was in the Hospital's plumbing). There were serious proposals to demolish it prior to opening it and starting again. Unfortunately (fortunately?) the old children's hospital was so dilapidated at that point that it had to go ahead, and bottled drinking water was used until the plumbing could be gutted and replaced. Even with the lead contamination it opened 3 years late and over budget.
As you can imagine, the state government that was in charge for the entire project (from commission, to design and construction) got utterly destroyed at the election. They aren't even the main opposition party in the state anymore. The newly elected government then had to defend itself in court over contracts the previous government had signed (among one was for a PERFORMANCE PAYMENT TO THE BUILDER)
You did mention the traffic and lack of parking spaces. The other aspect is the location being so far away for most people around the country to get to. It could have been put in empty fields in Blanchardstown near the other Hospital that's there. It's on a motorway and loads of empty space to build what you needed. The worst thing is this location was in Leo Varadkars constituency, so its fairly bloody obvious there was some bribery and corruption involved to put it in the centre of town, where people will find it really hard to get there or to get there fast. some of the roads leading up to it are ancient smaller roads, that people won't even be able to move out for an ambulance.
Blanchardstown is actually in Varadkar's constituency, not Rialto. Couldn't be put out in Blanch. There will be consultants working in the hospital and teaching in the universities, and nurses etc. will be training in this hospital and attending university so it wouldn't be possible for them to travel to outside the M50 and still make it back for lectures in the likes of Trinity and UCD. Also, the largest population in the country is in Dublin City center so they needed to build 'a children's hospital' here, but not a national children's hospital. There should have been one built in Dublin that was half this size, in a location that was easily accessible but road and public transport and they should also have built 2 smaller ones in Cork close to UCC and Galway close to UCG.
@chrisfox7 I was talking about Blanchardstown being Leo's constituency... The rest of what you said doesn't make any sense either as there already are students working in James Connolly in Blanchardstown. The location wasn't chosen because that's the largest population. The National Children's hospital is meant to service all of Ireland and Blanchardstown has the better access. So it made sense then and it makes sense now.
The Govt will announce an enquiry, pack it with their lawyer chums on huge retainers, and in five years time they will say...nothing
Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't there an inquiry into an inquiry.
Exactly.
@@philipmcdonagh1094don't forget, the Moriarty tribunal cost about 100 MILLION when it was all said and done. All to investigate claims of corruption which didn't even amount to a million pounds if I remember correctly. And in the end.... Nothing happened. We live in one big boys club.
Hilariously apt timing on dropping this as they just announced (on Friday night at 10pm too 🙄) that it's delayed until 2026.
Absolutely disgraceful behaviour from my country's government. This will be studied years from now along with the Berlin Airport for examples of crazy overspend.
and it was too expensive to install a sprinkler system in the hospital... they didn't plan to install a sprinkler system throughout a building that by its very nature would be occupied by sick children (Children not being known for their situational awareness at the best of times, adults are bad too).
"The new National Children’s Hospital has lost its appeal against a requirement to install a sprinkler system throughout the €1 billion development.
The National Paediatric Hospital Development Board (NPHDB) had argued that the existing fire safety design already exceeded current standards.
The board argued that extending the sprinkler system to all areas of the hospital would add up to €2 million in extra costs."
I feel like the lives of a huge amount of children is worth more than 2m€
They also "forgot" to install toilets in the dermatology department which was a cause of a recent delay and redesign.
I'd question if they exceeded the current standards.
If the standard says that they should have a sprinkler system, and they could demonstrate that they can evacuate the building in 'X' time more reliably without one, and the other measures ensure they have that time - sure that's valid, but I am willing to bet the designed safety assumes everyone's able bodied
Sprinkler systems aren't a universal panacea and are not always appropriate, particularly in areas where widespread water damage would be the more serious concern. Horses for courses. There are plenty of ways of providing more than adequate fire fighting systems without resorting to the dumb bomb nuclear option, which is the sprinkler system. Popular though that option has become with politicians and public since Grenfell.
Hospitals are very hi tech places these days, jam packed with very expensive machines and large battery systems not designed to be under water, or indeed anywhere near water in a fire. Sounds to me like they opted for a hybrid system in the design which accounted for that; which a bunch of outraged taxpayers and their lawyers just rode rough shod over. I hate to think about the outcry to come when a bin fire in a nurses office sets off the sprinkler system and does millions of euros in damage as a result.
The biggest killer in projects like this is always the untimely client not understanding the consequences of their design changes and the contractor not explaining those consequences clearly enough. Changing the fire suppression system was insane in terms of the delivery and the budget, not to mention the morale of everyone on site. What else did they change once the project had commenced?
We don't need sprinklers. If they're not maintained they become a bio hazard...
Irish living in Dublin here - it took two years to get planning permission to convert our attic …The underfunding of the healthcare system is particularly unacceptable as the country has a budget surplus.
Yeah, Ireland is rated really low and corruption, and I simply can’t believe that because it seems money just seems to disappear with y’all lol
As somebody who spent 22 years in construction in the United States it is my professional opinion that the project was too ambitious from the start they should have broken it up into smaller hospitals either 3 to 4 and use multiple contractors to build them simultaneously or one contractor to build them one by one they would have gotten more bang for their buck that way
Exactly. Never rely on a single company as it is competition that leads to the best outcomes
Absolutely. One in Dublin half the size of this one. One in Cork and one in Galway. They would have to be beside or close to universities because the consultants both teach in the Universities and work in the hospitals. Also, nurses etc. would be training in the hospitals as well as attending lectures.
yeah, but they do plan merge and shutdown two other ones in Dublin and move to this one.
One of them have better transit location and at least some parking spaces.
As am irish man this is wild see this. just today it was announced tat its delayed to 2026 opening thanks Simon for covering this😂😂😂😂
Lots of Irish people will still vote Fine Gael so we deserve this!
@@MoSalahFanEire Except for me, I hate those clowns, along with Feina Faul and Sein Faine too (butchered their names, but I don't care)
Lad, they're all fucking incompetent at this point. There is no real clean side out of their 3 main parties.
Speaking as someone currently sitting about 2 km from the hospital, please let me say this:
It is impossible to truly get across how inept the Irish government is at getting ANYTHING done. If a hospital for sick kids is this overdue and overbudget, you can maybe start to see why the Irish housing crisis is as bad as it is.
Same here in UK mate. I wish our politicians weren't so crap
Blame the Fools for voting for them
@@PRCOM They're all the same. Fianna Fail & Fine Gael are essentially identical, and Sinn Fein have never actually been tested running a government.
Great at human trafficking against our will they are.
Can't blame the voters when they don't have any options
Wait until you hear about the bike shelter at government buildings it cost €336,000.00
Yes a wall-less bike shed. Some may call it a bike stand, with pvc roof.
Sadly I've seen similar in the US. There was a judge who had a million dollar bathroom built for his office. I once had 2 Insane government jobs:
1. Where the school admin all got new $2000 executive chairs while teachers were buying kids supplies like pencils and scrap paper because the school wouldn't provide them
2. A different school district where a random closet had a $1500 light fixture in it and they spent tens of thousands fo dollars remodeling the closet because they disassembled the entire office and rebuilt it exactly as it was with new materials for literally no reason.
Local engineering company said they could do for 20k
They used funding for "active travel" to fix up the carpark. That 336k including tarring the carpark, installing footpaths and barriers, not just the bike shelter itself. It happens a lot here, councils get grants for bike lanes so that they can use some of the money to repair the road.
@@Hujhjgffw don't buy that
I live in Ireland 🇮🇪 and it's absolutely disgraceful, especially in the 21st century 💯
The Irish public didn't want this site and preferred a green field site on the edge of Dublin city with ample room for car parking, it was rumoured the inner city site was 'chosen' with pressure from consultants who preferred it's close location to them. It's well known the hospital will have a staggered opening, will have difficulty securing most grades of staff and will suddenly find 'issues' with several key areas like ventilation systems in the theatres etc. As others have pointed out, not one politician has been held accountable.
The other thing is where will all the staff live? Won't get staff if they can't find a dwelling.
@@captain007x some of CHI Crumlin do live in Naas area as they are my neighbors (and I'm their patient)... so yes, this location is "perfect for them" (yes, sarcasm)
Lol ya at over 2 billion this is gonna be all like oh the government is incompetent like someone needs to go to jail for this 😅
There was also a SPHE schoolbook depicting a pitchfork-wielding, bacon-cabbage-and-spud munching, home-loving, pasty, 'Family A' who enjoyed traditional Irish culture and disliked "imported trash" on TV; and a cosmopolitan, globe-trotting, diverse 'Family B' who enjoyed volunteering with the Red Cross in Syria, and, interestingly, had a partially sighted member who "travelled to Baltimore in the US for specialist treatment. This was paid for by fundraising in our community and by the Irish-American group in Maryland". This is the lesson being learned in Irish schools
Do you feel it's an inaccurate message tho?
@@doithimaceabhard7457 are you serious? Do you feel if there was a family with a different background, for example a 'traditional' Muslim Family A that wore Muslim garb, ate halal food, etc. - that they would have been presented in that way?
@@doithimaceabhard7457 do you feel this is an accurate message:
The Syrian leaders should get off their fkn holes and help their own citizens instead of relying on foreign volunteers
The Irish government should get off their fkn arses and fund the medical care required by the disabled children of their own taxpayers instead of giving the "message" in schools to children that families can fundraise to pay for their medical treatment in their own "community" and rely on foreign charities
Plus the message of this lesson:
What effect did weaponised mass migration to Ireland during the Plantations have? Does the legacy of centuries of divisive identity politics on the island of Ireland still linger on today?
How did the wealthy ruling class use Divide & Rule culture wars to keep the people too busy fighting among each other to unite against the political hierarchy?
How did they scape-goat dissenters through shaming them as a vocal hate-fuelled minority faction of 'Deplorables' that lacked popular support?
Why were there centuries of war, famine, insurgency, sectarian conflict and social division in Ireland, followed by generations of Irish peasants living in poverty, squalor, and destitution and reliant on international aid, charity, volunteers, etc., to barely subsist in their own country? When and how did this end and what role did the IRA and the Fenians play?
What did Edmund Burke mean when he wrote that rioting by the neglected populace from any grievance real or imaginary, was perverted from its true nature into a conspiracy against the state, and prosecuted as such?
Why did the UK government blame the civil unrest in Ireland in 1920 on the lack of emigration of young military-age men:
"The principle cause of the trouble is that for five years years emigration has practically ceased. There are 100,000 or 200,000 young men here, of from 18 to 25 years of age, who normally would have left the country"
"Then there is no hope of peace until these emigrations have taken place?"
"No" - Lord French, 23 January 1920 (source: Military Rule in Ireland 1920, Erskine Childers)
Did facilitating the emigration of military-age men from conflict zones play into the hands of the ruling regime, and why is the Irish diaspora so large?
That was a lot of fuss about nothing, a deliberately cartoonish portrayal that was obviously tongue-in-cheek. Our teenagers can take a joke. Lots of pearl-clutching from the permanently outraged, God help them if they ever read The Poor Mouth.
@@sean_d in that case why is my reply blocked when I try to suggest that you should make a similar cartoonish portrayal of a Muslim 'Family A'? As the mere suggestion of this enough to get a comment blocked, it seems to be a case of outrage and pearl-clutching for thee but not for me..
The Empire State Building was completed in 1Year & 45 days and that was during the Great Depression.
really? That's genuinely incredible that I've never heard of such a successful and ambitious build timeline for a building I've actually been to.
One floor every four days. Still standing with style. Great respect.
Yeah but did they change the design multiple times during construction
Obviously its much easier to do these things during a depression with lots of cheap labour and lots of unemployed builders hanging around.
Built by the paddys
the same company that built the hospital. also built a place for bikes. cost 335K. How many bikes does it hold. 18 bikes.
I live in Ireland, excellent research. The rejected first location and this pig-headedly chosen option were both terrible choices. It is a national hospital, so choosing a location in the city centre was always going to be wrong. They had multiple greenfield sites with room for more infrastructure outside the city, which would have brought those costs down. St James was already a working hospital cramped into limited space. They had to spend millions just to prepare the site so they could start building.
My husband worked in a joinery that got an order to make doors for this hospital. They made the doors and sent them to the hospital site. Later on they got another order. Same doors, same amount. Previous doors were not faulty, so who knows why they needed more of the same doors.
Total lack of communication ... Gombeens.
main contractor probably skimming off their profit again. Old doors possibly used on another job
It's frightening how stupidity and corruption have become the norm in Ireland, it's a sad bad long list
Most countries have the same problems (i.e. government stupidity & corruption).😂
I worked on this project nearly 9 years ago... It's a fucking shit show probably the most disorganised project anyone could work on what a fucking nightmare they also made a balls of some parts that were previously considered finished and had to be redone
the reason for the long wait time for admission into hospitals is because we have a system where no matter what injury you have you have to go through a&e to be admitted. so everyone just turns up at a&e , only if you arrive by ambulance do you go straight into the hospital and if they assess you as being not in immediate need of care youll be put out into the waiting room for how ever long it takes to be treated
As an Irish man working for a subcontractor on the project. I can tell you, a lack of skilled professionals on the job, a lack of prior planning before taking up any task, and clashes between contractors meaning some jobs have to be done or returned to two to three times. These are just the tip of the iceberg with the job.
BAM frequently close down sections of the hospital as "finished" forcing contractors due to go to those areas on behalf of mechanical or electrical, to waste a day or two gaining access to the area. Whole job is a hoax, If someone isn't getting a giant back hand of money out of that job, then someone's doing it wrong because all the signs are there.
Being Irish, what annoys me about this hospital is that it has been built where it is, why couldn't something of this scale be put in the centre of the country, so it's more accessible for the nation, somewhere like Athlone or something
Exactly. But nothing is ever logical or straightforward in this country.
The NCH is an embarrassment. But if nothing else, Bam should never be given another job in thus country. I'd love to see them try this if they were building something for Elon Musk or Ineos. Price agreed on tender. Huge penalties for not completing on time. A joke of an organisation, aided by a joke government
The idea was that its on the Luas line so everybody can get a bus to Dublin and get to it using public transport. I wouldn't know how to get from cork to Athlone.
it also has to be next to a major hospital for all the emergency transfers and to reduce operation costs. So it was either a choice between James or tallagh and tallagh has the psychiatric ward .
And Athlone has no main hospital whatsoever,
I live in Galway I think it would have been better to put the hospital here. At least we have buses that come here.
@mispelling Galway? Possibly the worst designed City in Europe (in terms of road infrastructure)? I should know, I work there. But I wouldn't go next or near the place if I didn't have to 🤣
This is simply depressing. What a shambles.
What an Omnishambles
Finally someone said what we were all thinking. They have to build the thing now it's got worldwide exposure.
A national shame for something that would help the lives of families and children from all over the country
@@croninalan From all over the third world more like.
@@richardjones2811 that's what I was thinking. It will be full of foreigners. In the beds and working in it. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Thank you Irish tax payers and corrupt/incompetent politicians & civil servants
they talked about it for about 40 years before it started being built , some of the children from that time will be old age pensioners before its finished
The choice of site came down to shortlist between 2 locations. The moment they ignored the greenfield site in a more affordable area with better access this disaster was predicable in it's path 😡. I was annoyed at the time, now it's just beyond expressing. Thanks for excellent article.
Every state project in Ireland goes over budget and is delayed. The 3 layers of administration in the health service means 60% of the budget is spent there instead of health provision. A&E departments were closed in county hospitals in order to create centres of excellence but most not finished or started, placing the burden on regional hospitals, hence the waiting times . They were at capacity levels already. 2 hospitals to be built in Galway and Dublin are held in judicial reviews for 10 years after planning was approved. As for physiatric health, the must underfunded of all . The fact that a young woman died of preventive sepsis in a limerick regional hospital shows how bad things are. For those unfamiliar with this issue, look to history of health care in Ireland over the last 25 years.
As an Irish person, thats a hard pill to swallow.
We would talk about this around the lunch table at work and say the money spent on this project could have built 5 hospitals nationally.
plus a prison for the corrupt politicians.
@@jimbannigan2139 lol 😆
@@jimbannigan2139to be fair it’s not just the politicians. It’s the unseen civil servants that get away with all these decisions with no accountability or consequences.
It probably would have made more sense to build a number of regional centers instead of one giant facility. And they could have completed them in less than 50 years.
Thanks for making this video
Corruption corruption corruption. Disgusting.
Except it’s not corruption. Its incompetence. Big difference. Ireland is one of the least corrupt countries in the world.
More like incompetence right from the off. Nobody on the "client" side really understood what they were building when they looked at the plans. Seems they didn't understand the very expensive scale models either. So the contractor quotes on the design as specified, and the client keeps altering the basic design because they finally understand the flaws while the project is underway. Costs spiral, delivery dates slip and the crew building the thing lose heart because they know some dick will tell them to rip out what they did last week and start again, every sodding week.
@rorykeegan1895 on the micro yes. On the macro no.
@@rorykeegan1895 It's incompetence, in a corrupt way. There are dozens and dozens and dozens of highly qualified "golden circle" type people (engineers, solicitors, professors, ex civil servants, "business men" - we need their keen acument so much) sitting on boards and committees over-seeing this stuff, and being handsomely paid for it. And the longer this goes on, the more they get paid. Gravy train!
Excellent work. Thanks for highlighting to a wider audience.
Currently on a 14 month waiting list for a neurology consultation here in ireland. Our relaxed attitude and forgiving approach to these things is killing us.
Wow, and here I've been thinking New Zealand was bad in terms of hospital wait times, construction delays b/c of government consent procedures, and bad public transport--Ireland makes NZ look good! 😞
The Irish Government makes Al Capone look like an Alter boy.
Mate you have no idea the Irish goverment makes Stalin look like a symbol of democracy
@@Simplebeney7 Well at least things got built...
@@peterm6687 yes just after 3 times the price so more people can launder money
@@Simplebeney7 No I meant in the USSR
To truly understand the problem Simon needs to do a video on Irelands new €336k bicycle shelter or perhaps how we built a port tunnel to allow big heavy HGVs to bypass the city centre but... well... we built it too small for the biggest HGVs to fit into it
I seem to remember that a rich private sector man offered to build a children's hospital for free in a green field site on the outskirts of the city, where it would've been more accessible to everyone who doesn't live in south Dublin inner city. He was refused point blank.
Ireland: the most corrupt county in the western world.
The working class pay Socialist taxes but for libertarian public services.
A haven for the wealthy where you can hide billions but the homelessness in plain sight.
A country that funds millions to advertise tourism in ireland, with not enough hotels for visitors to stay in.
Our wee nation was brought to its knees because too many houses were built, it is with a sense of irony we’re back on our knees because we now have too few.
A country that had a better rail network in 1924 than it does in 2024.
Bobby sands once said the laughter of our children would be our revenge, sadly they’re waiting for a bed instead.
Would you perhaps consider looking into something called the ‘Green Line’ in Calgary Alberta Canada?
A proposed light rapid transit (tram) rail line that, if built, could possibly be the most expensive rail line ever built.
Recently cancelled due to cost over runs, it is expected to cost 2.1 billion dollars (Canadian), just to abondone it and compensate builders for signed contracts, now cancelled.
Romania here. The same type of hospital cost 53 million euros. Of course, without the involvement of the state. Everything was managed by an NGO from private donations
Yeah.Ireland is a really expensive country though.
@@dazza9859 "X country is more expensive than Y" does not cause ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE difference. Only states can do that.
I'm a medical student in Ireland and this has to be one of the best researched and presented videos I've seen on this topic.
To add insult to injury... The Government had several other sites to build that hospital.
Hell one was about a massive site offered for FREE !
No they put it in the MOST expensive ost code in Ireland!!
Just incase anyone had any doubt whatsoever that GDP is meaningless to how good living standards are. Ireland in the highest ranked county by gdp yet we have a health care system worse than Kenya and workers are emigrating because they can't afford to live in their own county. Absolutely shameful and unless we completely overthrow the government it doesn't look like there's an end in sight.
You should see how many people from Ireland (and the UK) are arriving in Australia. It's astounding. You see so many people walking down the street who have clearly only arrived within the last few months.
@@tdb7992 More will come. I'm a Brit so can't speak for the state of things in Ireland, but here in the UK we just keep getting one incompetent government after another, running this country down. I'm also hoping to get out of here and immigrate before it's too late and countries like Australia start closing their doors on us.
The economist that came up with GDP was explicitly against it being used by itself to draw any conclusions. It was supposed to be part of a suite of analysis tools. And yet here we are. It's almost as if politicians don't want to listen to experts. Until it makes them look good.
It should have been built on the many greenfield sites out beside Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown not in the already bottlenecked kip that is James' Hospital. That's the real reason why the project is screwed
Unfortunatly Ireland has long had a problem with Government officials making "deals" with contractors behind the curtains. Even a simple bike shed on Governement property was billed at over 300k by a contractor who was a contributor to a member of governments election campaign. The people voted out the previous government because of similiar issues but they regained power by forming a coalition with a smaller party.
The late Margaret Thatcher used to say that only the private sector can deliver, I think she is wrong. The initial cost was in the region of €650 million, now its over €2.4 billion, and still no completion date, scandalous!.
Think she was wrong.. she bloody well was wrong. When capitalism turns into a capitalist monopoly, how can it be any different from a state monopoly. The choice isn't there
Ireland was in a bad state post colonialism (1920’s). Joining the EU dragged it gradually to prosperity culminating in the Celtic Tiger (2000’s) Now, it is racked by extraordinarily incompetent politicians and civil servants. Political corruption is endemic. No accountability and little transparency is a major problem.
Not connected, but alas, it ought to be mentioned; buying a house is out of reach for regular people in Ireland. Mothers with children are sleeping rough on the streets. It is reasonable to discuss since health care is absent and house prices are unaffordable whether the country can accept 10,000 of immigrants. They need and deserve healthcare as well. Ireland’s politicians need desperately to focus on improving the situation for poor people in Ireland.
There was no “colonialism”. Ireland was part of the UK and had Home Rule ready and waiting for the end of WW1. Instead, hotheads fomented first revolution then civil war and thousands died. The result is a divided island, with the North still in the UK and the Republic a vassal state of the EU.
Morally and spiritually it’s gone down the toilet.
There are exactly zero mother's with children sleeping rough on the streets, anyone with children is given a hotel room at a minimum
@@Krav_Swaga I’ll correct that; homeless mothers and children. Also children should not be sleeping on benches in police’s stations. Do you think, like I do, that there a problem?
53,000 houses/apartments per year with all the legal and illegal immigrants coming in. How will we be able to build all these dwellings? We're fucked.
Image living next to this monstrosity, no more sunlight. Ireland isn’t very sunny, but living in the shadow of this building must be sickening. It seems so out of place, judging from this video.
Edit: no parking garage? WTF I feel sorry for the neighborhood for all that traffic, but how can you expect everybody to get there by public transport or taxis?
Ireland tends to build large venues capable of holding thousands and thousands of people and never include any parking.
The argument?
Building any parking spaces would only encourage traffic, so by not providing them, the problem solves itself.
No, this is not a joke, it is a conscious decision by planners to minimise the impact of large developments.
Ireland is a joke. No parking for a paediatric hospital and a 12 hour emergency wait. How will parents and their children take the bus back home at 3am?
@@jochenstacker7448 Sounds like our green politicians here in Amsterdam. Raise the price of parking and parking permits. Remove parking places (which immediately get filled up with old abandoned bikes). And expect that the people suddenly don’t need their cars anymore. They don’t work for the people, but against them. And somehow people still elect them……
The alternative site (Blanchardstown Connolly) was touching/adjacent to a large motorway, on a large open green area, with a large suburban hospital already built there. Perfect for construction.
And in a very large suburb, with plenty of mid-price housing.
And nearby rail facilities. And potential for helicopter operations (which the chosen site wont be capable of).
And the land would be way cheaper. With lower traffic density.
But no.
There are a thousand parking spaces in the basement...
Thanks for doing so much research and exposing this debacle.
Thank you for having covered this. Many people will put this down to a range of issues but the ultimate issue is contractor greed and the desire of middlemen to profit from any and all projects. Hospitals are state responsibilities. Every cent spent on a government project must be fret over and no contract company should see their net worth grow at a faster rate than inflation based on the income from hospital construction.
👍
I’m glad this is getting worldwide attention. Government and both BAM are a shambles and deserve every bit of critic thrown at them. BAM not even building one room to snuff is appalling. But guess it’s okay for them since it’s means big money and only children to suffer.
Unfortunately in Ireland we have school children running sorry ruinning or country. The vast majority in the Dail wouldnt be qualified enough to manage the fruit and veg section in Dunnes Stores.
This is your best video in years.
My children were born in the 2000's and I knew the hospital would never be for them. My youngest will be 16 years tomorrow. 😂
But you definitely paid for it... I hope your kids are doing well.
Great video man 😊
Irish here - contrary to the statistics cited (though only in my admittedly anecdotal experience), the Irish public is acutely aware of how poorly run our health service is
Yep , we the irish people keep voting in the same Muppets from FG and FF
Every time Fianna failure and Fianna gowl win the votes, I grow more disappointed in the Irish people
Turkeys voting for Christmas like clockwork every four years
To be fair Sinn Fein would have spent all that money on border polls and you wouldn't even have the bike shed.
@@shaneosullivan8546 that's the same mindset why with keep on getting FF/FG and insert minor/scapegoat party here coalition.
@@nigelflood7074 They are all as bad. I'd vote for SF but they have no other plans except for getting the six counties back. Aontu will never be big enough to make a difference and the Greens....