James Geoghegan challanges CHI and contractor over €30k and delays

Thanks Chair and thanks to all the witnesses for being here. I'm going to start with you Miss Nugent. In the letter that you sent to the committee about the Christmas party in CHI Crumlin, you wrote that funding of €30,000 was received from a concession holder in CHI Crumlin in respect of the 2022 Children's Health Ireland Christmas party. That obviously predated your time as CEO. How did you discover that the purpose of that money was for a Christmas party? When the CNAG highlighted this amount of money was in a deferred income in our accounts, so we investigated and we were advised that it was, I suppose to put into context, in 2022 this Christmas party was for all CHI sites not just for Crumlin. I'm just interested in how you, obviously it predated you, so was there a document? Who did you talk to? Did you talk to the concession holder? So we conducted an internal review, myself and the new Chief Financial Officer Miss Gaffney. We established that CHI asked for this donation in attempt to keep the ticket price reduced for our staff. So CHI asked the concession holder for monies for the Christmas party? Correct and it was wrong. And is that documented in emails or how is that documented? There was, I suppose I will let Miss Gaffney talk on how it was recorded etc but we also spoke to people who were involved at the time and they advised that they had asked for it. You spoke to the then CFO of CHI Crumlin, is that who you spoke to? Correct. And the then CFO of CHI, he orally communicated that to you? And you relied on what was said to you in relation to that? And we also looked through the accounts. I might hand over to Miss Gaffney to explain. I'm only interested in what documents exist that evidence the Christmas party or support what the former CFO said to you? Are there documents? There are emails. There's limited emails but in the emails it clearly states that a sponsorship will be asked for a Christmas party in CHI. And you might provide a copy of those emails to this committee? That's no problem. And it's not your fault but just literally as you sat down at this committee and I don't know if you're aware of this but Aramark, the concession holder, have issued a statement last night that has now been published in the Irish Times and I'm going to read that statement to you. And what Aramark say is Aramark held a concession for the running of a retail outlet in CHI. Retail revenues fell due to visitor restrictions during COVID. The payment was made as final reconciliation of concessions which was required arising from service interruptions caused by COVID restrictions. We met with the CEO of Aramark earlier this week and we're unaware of that statement. That's the first we've heard about it. But what I can categorically say regrettably CHI asked for that donation. Well you heard and I acknowledge that this is the first time both of you have heard this statement but do you accept that what Aramark are now saying is a contradiction of what you told the Controller Auditor General? Absolutely and as I said when we met with the CEO of Aramark we established that you know it's the fault is on CHI and we're owning that and accepting that which is why we returned the money when we became aware of the ask for it. The position of Aramark now in a statement they've issued to the Irish Times is that it was for a different purpose. It wasn't like they're making clear that it related to revenues that fell due. Essentially that it was monies that were owed to you. That's what Aramark are saying. Did the CEO of Aramark when you met with him earlier this week contradict what you had told the Controller Auditor General of what the purpose of the money was for? I think what we need to do is look at what they're saying. We can review our own invoices to validate or otherwise what he is purporting to say. I mean it seems pretty clear that they're not accepting that the monies were for a Christmas party and yet you have an email that says it was for a Christmas party and the former CFO said that to you that it was for a Christmas party. Yes. So we have a very significant contradiction of the facts. At the time in which you were being audited by the Controller Auditor General, did you verify what you were saying to the Controller Auditor General as to what the purposes of the money was with the concession holder Aramark? Did you double check with them? My understanding attests were made to contact Aramark but as I say Miss Scalfney wasn't there at the time and the previous interim CFO is no longer with us. So when you told your auditor that it was for a Christmas party, had you talked with Aramark about that? You'd had no discussions with the concession holder? No. And then when you paid the concession holder the money back the 30,000 euro, was there any communication with Aramark when you were, did you literally just put the money in a bank transfer and send it back to them or were there discussions at that time? I would have to verify that. Do you remember Miss Scalfney? She wasn't here at the time. Even at that moment there was another person? Yeah. Okay. I can tell you that it was a credit note that was raised, it wasn't a bank transfer. Well yeah, well whichever, the monies went back but I would have assumed that there was some engagement at that point in time. So does it come as a big surprise to you this morning that Aramark seemed to be, and you said you met with the CEO earlier this week and they've now issued this statement which flatly contradicts what you told your auditor? Well we have as I say evidence that we asked for it regrettably. Okay. Mr Gunning, the hospital was supposed to be handed over to you today as we sit here. I mean you could rinse and repeat your statements to this committee, previous committees. I'm a parent of three young children myself and in the case of one of my child I spent more time in Crumlin and Temple Street that I'd care to remember. And I mean ultimately the children in Ireland and the parents of Ireland, they just want to know when is the contractor going to hand over this building to the people of Ireland? And what can we say to them? Thank you Deputy Kiligan. We are so close to completion of this project. It's important to know that and I think the members who would have looked at the prime time program I think was an excellent piece where you could see just how close we are to completion. And it's really important that we understand we are nearly there. Our job now is to make sure that when this hospital is completed, as the minister said on prime time, we won't accept anything that isn't at the appropriate clinical standard. And yet you're still saying that the contractor doesn't have enough boots on the ground in the hospital after all of this, after the years that this has gone on and as you say we're so close, that you're still dissatisfied that they don't have enough. I mean what is wrong with this contractor? I mean has the state ever had an engagement with a contractor of this hostile nature? I certainly can't, you've been around a long time Mr Gunning, I certainly can't think of a situation like this that is comparable. I have never experienced anything to this extent and I think it's important. I wanted to just talk about what is delaying completion right now? What are the issues? There are a number of completion of works items. We've said in the statement about the acoustic issues with the ventilation and then there's the rework of items. Now we have issues, a number of issues with doors, manual doors, sliding doors. We have a number of issues with floors. These were discussed again on Monday night. We've had issues with floors in the past. We have 15 operating theatre floors that need to be replaced. We have issues with water leaks coming in from the outside and leaks within the building from some of the plumbing and other systems and the duct cleaning is an issue that's developed over the last number of weeks. Now these are all issues that rest entirely with the contractor. This delay and this program is a matter we're waiting for the program but I think it's important to say on the early access the CHI and NPHDB has made tremendous positive views of early access. We are ready, the contractor is finished, we are ready to deploy this. Just to maybe illustrate some of the points you're making, I'm right in saying that there was a minor fire, I don't know when it was, was it a month ago or a week ago in the hospital and that would have caused a level of damage and the cause of that fire presumably was obviously unintentional, an accident of some form or another. Describe to us, look in major construction projects things go wrong, I think we all recognize that, but when that happened that caused damage. How quickly was for example the damage repaired when an incident like that happened? I'm going to ask Fionnuala to deal with that. That particular incident that BAM did seek to repair the damage immediately. Actually the positive, even though it was unfortunate that we had a fire within the operating theatre corridor, it wasn't in a theatre, it was in the corridor, the fire alarm activated straight away and the sprinklers activated straight away, which was a good test of the quality of the systems in the hospital. And I'm not trying to draw that, what caused the fire? It was an accident, there was an operative with the heat gun repairing a piece of flooring in the corridor and the heat gun came in contact with an aerosol can and the aerosol can just exploded and went on fire. And again, not to pin it on anybody, but I mean like obviously that's not something that should happen in a construction project. Presumably there are supervisors. There are supervisors, there are hot work permits, there's health and safety requirements, but it's just a freak accident. But you know, again there might be more health and safety, more supervision would have helped maybe prevent that, but the good thing about that, whilst it has happened, it's not going to cause any delay, it's the other issues that David talked about. So in that example there was a fire and then BAM came in and they just sort of fixed the stuff quickly? It's still in progress, they dried all the water up, they took the ceiling away because the ceiling was damaged, they've taken part of the wall away, it'll be replaced. We have to do an investigative survey, due diligence survey, to make sure there's no smoke in the ducts again. So explain to people, you know, why then if an incident like that happens, BAM, you know, it's all boots on the ground, we throw everybody in, we solve the problem. Why would all of the other issues that are outstanding in the hospital, can they not, you know, fan the flames of those metaphorical fires and throw people at the solution to deliver up the hospital? Why can they not replicate their rapid response to a fire incident to all of the other things that are outstanding? We have maintained for many times in these that there are insufficient resources being deployed by the contractor to deliver to the timeline that they're committing to it. I think 18 or 19 changes in the substantial completion date is all the evidence you need to prove that. It just hasn't happened and I will say to you that the deflect, you know, a fire like that will mean resources are coming from other important work areas to deal with that, rather than progressing the issues I've mentioned, the doors, the floors, the leaks and other things that should be being progressed in order to get to substantial completion. In our view, this is primarily a lack of resources and a lack of supervision of those resources to get proper progress in relation to... And as you know, the contractor's not here, but what they keep saying is, no, no, no, it's none of that. It's all of the design changes that you guys are demanding of them. Like, where is the grey? Where's the middle in this? Like, are these drawing changes or what are these? You know, what are the things that they say you're imposing on them versus what they say they're doing? Well, if I just, you know, what is stopping us getting to substantial completion? There are no design issues between us and substantial completion. This is all about rework of doors that need to be reworked, floors that need to be reworked, leaks that need to be addressed, issues like the cleaning of the ducts. It's not a design issue to clean ducts. It's a work issue. It's an allocation of resources to do it. But on the design change, maybe Felham could just briefly comment on that. I'd like to dispel this statement made by Bam, that there's design changes. There has not been one design change on this project in 2026, all right? But I go back then nine months ago, over the last nine months, that's the first time that Bam actually offered a clinical room at the right standard and got signed off and validated by the design team nine months ago. In that nine-month period, there was 58 issues, changes in 58 rooms out of the 5,728 rooms, 58, okay? In that same period, Bam has closed 60,000 defects and snags in the building. Now, 58 issues, and I'll tell you what those issues are, versus 60,000 defects. Now, I don't think you need to be a brain surgeon to understand what's causing the delay in this project. It's rework, it's closing out defects, and we are just on the defects with our team in place, and Bam are closing out these defects to the correct standard. It's just, it's taking more time than it should, and it shouldn't be there in the first place. And the pace of handover was, there was a consistent pace of how many rooms were being provided over to you, but that pace in the last week or so has declined. So what's going on there? I suppose, I think, like, it's like anything else, when you get to the last 5% of any project, if you build a house extension or something, it's the most difficult, the final bit of snagging. And yeah, it's dropped off from about 160 rooms per week to about 117 is the latest 4-week average per week. And finally, you know, the curtain is going to be opened when...