Another day, another example of an expensive blunder hitting the Department of Health.
In September it was revealed that plans for a £50m energy centre to power the Royal Group of Hospitals were to be placed on indefinite hold amid rising costs and delays to the opening of the new maternity building and construction of the children’s facility.
In the planning for more than six years, the centre was to replace an existing boiler plant described in documents as nearing the end of its useful life.
Had it gone to deadline, with an original 2024 completion date, it would have coincided with the opening of a 10-storey children’s hospital on the site of Bostock House, a tower block that once housed student nurses.
However, latest estimates state that work will only start on the children’s facility next year and is unlikely to be completed before 2030.
Now an Assembly question tabled by the DUP’s Diane Dodds has further revealed that almost £10m has been spent on the green energy project.
Earlier this month the Health Minister Mike Nesbitt said that medical gas pipes at Belfast’s new maternity hospital will cost £50,000
The hospital, at the Royal Victoria site, has already faced significant delays.
The Department of Health said Pseudomonas bacteria was detected in the water system.
The maternity hospital is already almost 10 years behind schedule.
The high presence of a bacteria in the building’s water system is expected to cause yet more delays.
A Northern Ireland Audit Office report earlier this year said the hospital was originally expected to be completed by the end of 2015.
The report said: “Whilst the new maternity hospital has been substantively built it is not operational. The latest estimated date for completion of the final phase of the Maternity Hospital is June 2025, almost 10 years late.
“The original cost estimate was £57 million, with costs now expected to be £97 million.”
Where that money will come from is unclear, but what is obvious is that error after error is doing nothing for public confidence in the ability of the Executive to manage the huge health portfolio.
In fairness to the minister, many of these issues are inherited, but they are now his to fix and he must come up with solutions to the hugely expensive problems his department faces.
Health is the most challenging of all the Executive’s ministerial portfolios, but that is not enough to excuse a department that seems to waste money on delays and mistakes that would be better spent reducing waiting lists.