Casement Park’s redevelopment may be reaching its endgame at last. On Friday it was reported that the GAA has decided that the Stadium will not be built to the hoped for 34,000 capacity due to a shortfall in funding and that it will have to be scaled back. According to Enda McClafferty reporting for the BBC….
As a result it will not be able to stage Ulster senior final matches but will instead be used for other provincial fixtures…Rebuilding the west Belfast stadium was estimated to cost about £260m of which £120m was jointly in place from the Stormont Executive, the Irish government and the GAA. The UK government had pledged a further £50m as part of the spending review which left a shortfall of £90m. It is understood some in the GAA felt there was question mark over the government’s financial commitment, which has prompted a rethink.
Sinn Féin First Minister Michelle O’Neill had insisted in the past that Casement Park would be ‘built on my watch’. She released a statement in response to the news reports…
“Ms O’Neill said: “Despite obstruction and delay, real progress has been made in recent months, with diggers and workers now on site as the redevelopment moves forward. We must continue to build on that momentum.
SDLP opposition leader Matthew O’Toole was quoted as saying
…the announcement will leave GAA fans looking “at the last decade and a half of delay and ask what it was all for…Michelle O’Neill said very clearly Casement Park would be built on her watch but those words increasingly ring hollow.”
If the GAA confirms that Casement Park is to be greatly scaled back to a much smaller design, it marks the beginning of the end of a story that can be traced back to 2009. In January of that year then DUP Culture Minister Gregory Campbell scrapped plans for a 38,500 seat capacity stadium at the former Maze site due to disagreements between his party and Sinn Féin. That proposed stadium would have been used by rugby and football teams as well as the GAA. Plans were instead put forward to refurbish the existing home grounds for each sport with Ravenhill and Windsor Park both currently able to seat roughly 18,000 people each.
Northern Ireland seems destined to end up with three very, very modest stadiums. In contrast, Dublin hosts two stadiums capable of hosting over 50,000 people with Croke Park by itself being able to host over 80,000 people. If any big events come to the island of Ireland in the years to come, it seems inevitable Northern Ireland will be passed over in favour of the Irish capital. The failure to build a world-class stadium after nearly two decades of trying can be set alongside the never-ending saga of the A5 upgrade and the continued decay of our water infrastructure as showing we simply cannot build anything anymore.
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