London clearly responsible for plugging Casement funding gap – Newton Emerson

The comparison increasingly made between Casement Park and the new Dundonald Ice Bowl is daft whataboutery even by Northern Ireland’s lamentable standards.

The £52 million ice bowl will be a council leisure centre, a completely different context to a GAA stadium hosting UEFA matches – and the ice bowl has itself been the subject of dog-whistling nationalist objections.

The equivalence that should be drawn is with the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, a textbook illustration of a successful international sporting event. It is bizarre that this recent, relevant and nearby example has been so overlooked. Perhaps ‘Casement’ and ‘Commonwealth’ are hard to see as supporting concepts.

The most direct Northern Ireland connection to the Birmingham games is that the main venue, the Alexander Stadium, was built by Mallusk firm McLaughlin & Harvey. The £72m redevelopment of an existing athletics facility was delivered on time and on budget, despite its tight two-year schedule coinciding with the pandemic and a sharp rise in inflation. McLaughlin & Harvey’s achievement was acclaimed by political leaders and the press in England, yet it appears almost unknown here.

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The construction industry and its customers are reluctant to discuss costs in advance, as these are matters of negotiation and commercial confidentiality. No firm will want to offer definitive public pronouncements on Casement’s final bill. Nevertheless, it is poor journalism to fill the silence with tribal arguments.

The Alexander Stadium stands in contrast to the £500 million athletes’ village, the largest project planned around the 2022 games and the only part for which Birmingham City Council was solely responsible. The village was meant to house all the athletes, then be repurposed into an actual village of 1,000 apartments for sale, with a third reserved as affordable homes. This plan was abandoned at the start of the pandemic as costs had already risen by a fifth and the council feared it would not be completed on time. Athletes were housed in universities and hotels; a revised village development opened last year.

Total public spending on the Birmingham games was £778 million, over 10 times the cost of the main stadium. Multiple facilities had to be built or upgraded and there were large administration and operating costs, as will be the case with the UK and Ireland’s Uefa programme: only half its 10 stadiums are finished.

Birmingham and London split the Commonwealth Games bill 25/75. The council agreed in advance to pay for £180m of facilities under its remit, funded in part by new local taxes. Central government agreed to pay for the rest with a grant.

Although there was no formal declaration of who would be responsible if cost over-runs threatened the games, that was hardly necessary. The council’s contribution was capped, the government’s contribution was not, and allowing the event to fail was politically unacceptable. Hosting international games is a national project for which national government is ultimately responsible, as demonstrated by how often Olympic host cities are bailed out.

In the end, Birmingham did not put this to the test: the final cost of the 2022 games was little more than the £750 million initial projection. However, the 25/75 split remains instructive when considering Casement’s cost.

Birmingham City Council, analogous to Stormont in our terms, made a determined bid to host the Commonwealth Games. By contrast, Stormont had collapsed when the government nominated Northern Ireland to host UEFA matches, identified Casement as the only credible venue and promised it would be built. So while cost over-runs should always be questioned, there is little question the government is responsible for plugging any major funding gap. That was true even before Dublin chipped in €50m.

While cost over-runs should always be questioned, there is little question the government is responsible for plugging any major funding gap. That was true even before Dublin chipped in €50m

The enormous cost of hosting sports tournaments is no longer justified by anything as gauche as national pride. Instead, there are ponderous references to leaving a legacy, which in Birmingham focused on “inclusivity”.

Realistically, such brief events have fast-fading impacts, often failing to leave behind even useful sports facilities. The 2022 Commonwealth Games are considered a triumph in almost every respect, yet their principle legacy will be a stadium that while not a white elephant, is still likely to be under-used and to become a liability to the taxpayer.

Seen in this light, the GAA’s ownership of Casement Park is a non-issue or an active advantage. Critics who worry the GAA should pay more of the bill, or share some of the profits, might be better off insisting it bears all future losses.