Sick and injured children could begin receiving treatment at the new National Children’s Hospital by spring or summer 2026 if building contractor BAM fulfills its contractual obligations, HSE chief executive Bernard Gloster has said.
Although an official update is expected within days, building work should be sufficiently complete by November to allow “early access” for commissioning the facility. The commissioning process – equipping the premises and making it fully operational for patients – is expected to take several months before admissions can begin.
Mr Gloster emphasized that the timeline “ultimately” depends on BAM delivering a compliant work program. “It’s not an issue of money. It’s not an issue of resources on our part. It is an issue of them giving us a compliant programme of work and sticking to that compliant programme,” he said.
The hospital’s original completion date was August 2022. As recently as this August, Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill raised concerns about insufficient workers on site despite adequate state funding. Worker numbers dropped from 800-900 per week at the end of 2024 to around 400-500 by late August.
The announcement comes alongside confirmation that Children’s Health Ireland, originally designated to operate the new hospital at St James’s campus in south Dublin, will be integrated into the HSE by 2027. Both organizations will jointly manage the facility during the transition period.
CHI has faced severe criticism over unacceptable waiting lists for children’s orthopedic surgery and the unauthorized use of implantable springs in spinal procedures at Temple Street Children’s Hospital. However, Mr Gloster denied that recent scandals drove the integration decision, citing instead the need for better coordination across pediatric services nationwide.
“The new National Children’s Hospital needs to connect in a very full and integrated way with paediatric units across the country,” he explained. “A system like that can be far better integrated and supported by being a direct part of the overall healthcare system which in Ireland is the HSE.”
Mr Gloster acknowledged “trust issues” have emerged regarding CHI in recent months. “Trust is a very hard thing to rebuild when it is broken and when it’s fractured,” he said, describing communication failures with parents as matters “you couldn’t but be embarrassed by.”
He emphasized that improvement efforts are already underway and not waiting for full HSE integration. Despite the controversies, Mr Gloster noted that thousands of CHI patients in oncology, cardiology, neurology and general medicine receive “excellent service, a really high standard of service, very often ranked in the category of world class.”
Mr Gloster is departing his role in March. As CEO of Ireland’s largest employer with over 148,000 staff and a €26.9 billion budget, he receives an annual salary of €398,174.