February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
In a terse three-paragraph statement, the Irish government said last week that there would be no state cash “in the medium term” for the so-called Bertie Bowl.
The U-turn on the stadium is regarded as a major blow to the personal prestige of the sports-mad Taoiseach, who had cherished the dream of a world-class sports stadium for the country.
In the end, it came down to a pre-cabinet standoff with Tanaiste Mary Harney and other ministers, who are implementing a series of painful spending cuts as the public finances deteriorate — though the government is insisting they are post-budget “adjustments” and not cuts.
In newspaper advertisements last Friday, the government sought “expressions of interest” from the private sector to build a stadium with a 65,000-seat capacity that must be ready for use by June 2007.
Dunloe Ewart property development company chief executive Noel Smyth was the first to say he would be responding. If the stadium were to be built, it would probably involve a consortium.
What the government will make available is land on the 500-acre Abbotstown site. Those who are interested have until Oct. 18 to reply.
As part of the bid to keep the joint Ireland-Scotland Euro 2008 bid alive, the government has asked the GAA to make the 80,000-seat Croke Park available on a once-off basis for the showpiece soccer matches.
In a statement, GAA president Sean McCague said he did not understand how an application to stage an event like Euro 2008 could have been made without the various venues being assured. He said the GAA had pointed this out to the government on a regular basis in recent months.
The Football Association of Ireland and the Irish Rugby Football Union had both signed up to the Bertie Bowl. Both are angered by the funding retreat.
The FAI had abandoned its own Eircom Park stadium project after pressure to back the Bertie Bowl, and the IRFU had also been enthusiastic supporters as it is struggling with the limits of the aging Lansdowne Road ground.
Meanwhile, UEFA officials visited Croke Park this week, where soccer still can’t be played under the GAA’s rules, and the Abbotstown site, where there has still been no development.
UEFA officials said afterward that Ireland and Scotland’s bid was “alive and kicking.”
A bruising volte face of some sort had been on the cards as budgets for health, education and infrastructure collapsed with Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy retrenching in the face of lower economic growth and falling tax revenue.
A watered-down stadium proposal, backed by finance from a private/public partnership, had been raised as a compromise. That not a single penny would be contributed from government coffers was completely unexpected.
The Progressive Democrats had never been enthusiastic.
In the election campaign, then PD Attorney General Michael McDowell derided the stadium as a “Ceaucescu-era Olympic project” that must be opposed as a matter of basic political morality.
He said a “palace of sport, with the 80,000-seater stadium is out.” Fianna Fail dismissed the speech as election grandstanding in a tight constituency battle.
Both the taoiseach and the tanaiste have denied there is a rift growing between the coalition partners and claimed there had been no damage to relations in the government less than four months after the general election.