Pray for us

With his announcement, the PM wanted to show how decisive the government is. After all, it takes guts to decide... on a name. And here we had him announcing that the Tal-Qroqq hospital is to be named Mater Dei.

At the same time came the admission that time limits along the road to decision making at Tal-Qroqq had fallen by the wayside. We were told that discussions with the unions about work methods at the new hospital were already behind by nine months. The story is so familiar.

The Fenech Adami administration has a hopeless record about keeping its project work, recurrent or capital, on track. The only exception is - or might be - its application to get Malta into the EU at all costs, but that is another story altogether.

I shiver when I hear news like that of last week about Tal-Qroqq. The whole project has been a nightmare, a glaring and very costly example of how not to do things. The idea started off as a research project to be funded, built and run by the Milan-based San Raffaele concern. Both that start and its aftermath were fuelled by rabid cronyism.

The project soon developed into a joint venture between the San Raffaele outfit and the Maltese government for a specialised hospital. By the mid-'90s, the Maltese government had accepted to become the sole mover behind an expanded quasi-general hospital, that would assume some unspecified portion of the load taken by St Luke's. San Raffaele would be responsible for designing the operation, eventually running it.

Nobody knew how tasks would be allocated between the two hospitals. The medical and paramedical professions were totally ignored in all the 'planning' that was being done. Designs for the new hospital were handled by San Raffaele consultants in a totally haphazard manner. Nobody knew what was going on.

Meanwhile, the building of the hospital was contracted to the Swedish Skanska firm. Like the contract for the supply of three Gozo Channel ships signed on the eve of the 1996 elections, cast iron legal provisions locked any government into the Skanska relationship, come rain, come shine. The contract itself rightly came under criticism for the way it was allocated. With hindsight, once the project got the go-ahead anyway, the San Raffaele group should have been given short shrift, while the Italian company which made a very good offer should have been awarded the construction work.

Labour's initial position was to scrap the project altogether and in line with our policy, to launch major improvements at St Luke's. We discovered how that would entail payments running into scores of millions, given the contractual arrangements that the previous government had signed. Yet, by just continuing with the project as we found it, we would face the monstrous scenario of running two major hospitals across both sides of Msida valley, with all the implications of spiralling costs, capital and recurrent.

When the relevant calculations were made, it turned out that the least unsatisfactory solution was to concentrate general hospital facilities at Tal-Qroqq, eventually decommissioning St Luke's. That entailed new financial commitments. But it was better to spend an extra 40 million on having a new general hospital, than writing off 40 million. Technically, it was the most difficult sub-optimal decision that I have had to participate in during my lifetime.

Moreover, given the contractual arrangements, the only way forward was to get Skanska into the new profile for the project. The then Labour government made arrangements to have an outside supervisory body oversee Skanska's operations and decide autonomously on the planning of the Tal-Qroqq hospital.

The 'new' Fenech Adami administration post-September 1998 - just trust it to make this kind of decision - agreed to let Skanska run the whole show. As of now, no meaningful financial reporting about the state of the project is being provided. Are there any cost overruns? Who knows?

The violent hiccups that the project has been periodically subject to are discussed among insiders. The rest of us need not know.

Then, there is the migration plan that needs to be implemented professionally and seriously, if the Tal-Qroqq hospital is not to become another quagmire. In 1996/1997, the government's analysts reported that if, such as they are, the operating systems of St Luke's were replicated at Tal-Qroqq, an already problematic situation would become catastrophic.

Some two weeks ago, the health minister promised in parliament he would publish the migration plan that is being proposed. We still await that publication. Meanwhile, there is no lack of PR about how the Tal-Qroqq project is being positioned.

Millions of taxpayers' funds, past, present and future are involved in this project. It is the costliest drain on the public purse. Yet, as usual, we are being fobbed off with childish efforts to make weak decision-making appear like strategic statesmanship.

There can only be one sincere reaction to the announcement that the government has 'decided' to call the Tal-Qroqq Hospital Mater Dei: please pray for us - addressed not to the Fenech Adami administration, but to the new titular.