Aidan Farrelly asks witnesses about hospital redesign costs

Thank you very much everyone for being here once again today. Just to confirm, did anyone receive external training in advance of today's visit? Yes we did. We have a company who basically is our PR advisor and part of that contract is preparation for committees such as this because we want to be able to... Who's the company Ms Nugent? Q4. And how much was paid for this visit? £20,242,900 per month. For this visit? No, it's part of that contract, part of that monthly fee. A monthly fee? You pay a PR company a monthly fee? A monthly fee, yeah. And then none for yourselves? It's the same company we use but we would have tendered for this service a number of years ago from the same company that CHI uses. We have an annual arrangement so there's no additional cost to this but it's included in the broad set of services that they provide. Press, public relations, community outreach, we have a local residents monitoring committee. A whole range of different activities are comprehended within this scheme that we tendered for. Thank you. You've already noted the kind of contradiction in yesterday's statement from BAM with regards to designs where they've said the design of the hospital is still not fully finalised and you've contradicted that in some way, shape or form. In the entirety of this project, how many redesigns have there been in total? Right down to the minutia, how many redesigns has there been? As I said at the previous committee, there's been no material change to the design and functionality of this building since 2019. What happens is, we're no different to the public's work contract. Under the public's work contract and EU directives, design teams cannot specify products or materials. Basically, you put in specifications in which the contractor then comes back with its products and systems, which are going to be slightly different and they all have to be brought together and that's called coordination. The contractor is responsible for that. There's been no substantial, how many, a sum of how many redesigns have been for the duration of this project? I don't have the exact total. I can tell you how many drawings have been reissued. The drawings have been reissued since 2009. There's 23,500 reissues of drawings. Now there are 6,000 drawings on the project, so they've gone through a cycle of revisions, but they've done that because of inputs from the contractor. And there has been some design change and we have that in our statement. The contractor has been paid 6.5% of the contract sum they've got in design change to date. 53 million determined, a total of 60 including adjudications and conciliations. So 60 million of the overall? 60 million of the 910 has been paid in addition to the contractor to date, which is 6.5%. Broken down, half an increase in provisional sums and about half in extra money for measured works in the bill of quantities. And do you expect there to be any further revisions from your side of things? There will be some as we still continue to go towards the end, but it tapers off because we're pretty much done. But the determination process, and the board members will have the claims table, but the determination process that this typifies and this is giving to you as the end of March, you know, that lags somewhat what's happening on their own. So we would expect these numbers to increase somewhat, but, you know, we're still in the 50, 60 million territory here. We're not close to the billion euros that the contractor is claiming. Would you suggest then that the statement from BAM yesterday is misrepresentative of the current situation? As I said, and this is factual information, right? I'm here as a witness, okay? There has been no design change this year that has impacted any physical works on site. If you go back nine months, it's 58 issues in 58 rooms. If you go back 18 months, it's, I think, 200 issues in about 200 rooms. And I'm going to give you an idea what they are. I'm just running out of time. I know, but they're very simple issues. It's moving a socket in a room or it's actually adding an emergency light because when you – we have a massive hospital. There's lots of, you know, cameras, escape signs in the ceilings and that. And sometimes you need a minimum of five looks over, you know, a green break glass unit or something like that so you get shadowing. So we've put in additional lights. They're basically plug and play. You drill a hole, you put the light in, and there's a cable five meters long, and you plug it into the modular wiring system. And that is the majority of the changes in the last 18 months. Design is not delaying this project. It is rework and closing out defects. That's very clear, Mr. Brink. Thank you. On the 8th of April, the Minister wrote to Royal BAM, Mr. Cunningham, as you've said, and she sought an update on both the early access to the hot block, which will be – when it will be provided. The Minister, in a PQ response to me last week, said that she still hadn't received a response. Has anyone from the department seen that response? And is it possible to furnish this committee with the letter that the Minister sent, but also the response received from BAM? I'll answer that, Deputy. The – we will, of course, share that letter with the committee. And just as of last night, I can tell you that a response was furnished to the Minister as well, which is typical of this contractor in putting material in at the last minute in order to egg up the situation from the PAC today. We will review that letter in time. What I can say is it mirrors a lot of the accusations that have been suggested in the press of late, and it's in direct response to the Minister's interview on prime time as well. And we will review that letter, and, of course, we'll share that with the committee as well, as appropriate. Thank you. Have you seen that letter, Mr. Gunningham? What does it entail? Well, as Eamon summarized, there's a – I don't see anything that I haven't heard before, if I was to put it that way. There was no new information here that I, in any sense, feel that I need to kind of, you know, go off and do a major bunch of research on. We understand – you know, the BAM narrative is very clear. It's all about change, and the cost of this extensions of time is all the employer's fault. We rebut that in its entirety. Great. Thanks, Mr. Gunningham. Sure. You know, the letter essentially sets out we're very good at delivering projects. Look at the projects we delivered. But to me, that's like the school child saying, I didn't do my homework today, but look at all the other homeworks I did. But we're concerned about the times we're projecting funds today, and we're not getting any traction on that. Thank you both. Ms. Nugent, if we can just go back to that 30,000 euros, and now we see a complete difference of opinion from Aramark with regards to that. You mentioned – I'm very conscious you weren't in position, and Ms. Gaffney, you weren't in position either at the time. What was the attempt to reduce ticket prices for the Christmas party? Could you just give me the context for what that was? So there was a Christmas party to be held for all sides to come together as part of integrating the three entities. Where was that going to be, Ms. Nugent? Pardon? Where was that going to be? That was in the Guinness storehouse. Okay. So, you know, staff pay for their own tickets, but at the time there was an attempt to try and reduce the cost for staff, and the donation was to offset against the cost of the event. And then in your kind of subsequent inquiries, why wasn't one cent of that 30,000 euros put towards that Christmas party? I'll hand over to you to explain that. So to understand, when the money was received into the bank, it was received in January 2023, and because the expenses hadn't been received in full for the Christmas party, and the funds regarding the contributions from staff hadn't been received, it was put into a deferred income account, which is not a bank account, which is a general ledger account in our management accounts, and it sat there until all monies were received and all expenses were received and should have been reconciled in 2023. And was it? No. It wasn't, and unfortunately it carried forward into 2024, and it was during the 2024 audit that CNAG pointed out. So did staff end up getting a discount on their Christmas party tickets? They only paid a certain amount, yes. So was this event sponsored by Aramark? Was that what was sought? A donation towards the cost was sought. You mentioned sponsorship, though, in your previous contribution. It wasn't that there was... It wasn't publicised as... No, it was a donation towards the cost, so it wasn't the company's name over the entrance to the event or anything like that, which sponsorship normally is, so if I use the wrong language before... No, that's fine. So if CHI didn't use the £30,000, I'm going to assume then that CHI found money elsewhere to cover the difference between what staff paid and what Aramark didn't pay. Is that correct? And how did that manifest itself or crystallise itself in the accounts? Where would that have come from? So obviously we have different income sources, and it would have been used for one of those income sources that we have that's not related to day-to-day activities. Ms Nugent, would you be open to... You said that there was no... You're open to saying there's no other cases where this was happening, whereby vendors were approached to ask them for a donation. But the Foundation, I would imagine, would quite often seek donations. Why do you think that €30,000 should have been resting in a CHI account as opposed to have been encouraged to Aramark? Donate this to the Children's Health Foundation, where this would have had a much greater impact than sitting in an account for an endless period of time. I cannot speak for what happened in 2022 or 2023. It predates me. But the Children's Health Foundation, which is a separate legal entity to CHI, raises money for the purposes of children, not for staff parties. Thank you. Thanks, Ms Nugent. Thank you. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay.