Mater Dei Hospital’s original architect, Richard England, has washed his hands of the crisis involving weak concrete structures, saying he had been “kicked out” before the building phase started.

Contacted yesterday, Prof. England said he was not the hospital’s architect when construction work started and, therefore, “had nothing to do” with the weak concrete structures found at the hospital’s accident and emergency department.

“When we were still involved, that building was not part of the scheme. When we were involved, the hospital had 400 beds. Then we were kicked out and the size doubled, so I know nothing about it,” he said.

The contract for the building of the hospital was awarded to a consortium, which included Swedish construction giant Skanska, together with Maltese developers Blokrete and Devlands.

Several attempts to contact directors of the two Maltese companies yesterday proved futile.