Casement Park in line for major overhaul - 40,000 all seater Stadium.

[trailer]

It's only 33m. When the UK government is increasing defence spending or funding other infrastructure projects the money is there. Just get it built.

[trailer]

Why you so against it?

[RadioGAAGAA]

Why you so against it?

'cos a proverbial diamond studded and gold lined Casement Park is not needed.

A basic 20k stadium is needed. The money saved by the GAA can then be put into coaching in the schools of Antrim and making a real difference to the fortunes of the GAA in Antrim. The money saved by Stormont can be put into hospital beds.

[imtommygunn]

Did we not give it away though rather than it being removed from us?(maybe I am wrong on this but that was my understanding?) ok that was probably on the back of promises mind you.

[Tony Baloney]

That's that then. We're all wondering who is going to foot the extra £33m to build it and all the while the answer was staring us in the face - Just build it whatever the cost.

Sure, Christ, it's both "needed" and "required" all at the same time.

But Paul Maskey says cost cannot delay the project any further. Why are Shinners so mad keen to get this built at the highest possible cost?

[illdecide]

Correct me if i'm wrong but was planning or temporary (if such a thing exists) planning was granted only to have a change of heart, I believe that was why Antrim/Ulster GAA closed Casement then as they believed the scheme was about to start. Paul Scott of Sport NI claimed that the GAA and Councillors were trying to bully him into approving the planning when he had safety concerns with the proposal, you cannot use the field of play as part of your evacuation or as a safe place as the red and green guides state you must evacuate the stadium in 8 mins. Using software they can calculate the movement from the stands to safely outside the stadium and according to their software this could not be achieved due to the surrounding area around the stadium, there simply was not enough room for everyone to spill out onto the streets without it backing up back into the ground.

What i can't get my head around is how this was allowed in the old existing Casement but was not ok in the new proposed stadium, so it was ok to have a crush in the old ground but not the new one. I know some of the new laws probably came out after the Ground was constructed which is fair enough but surely through time they should have been given a time limit to sort this out. Belfast City Council are responsible for issuing a Safety certificate for a match day and the proper way of dealing with this is to reduce the capacity for the game, so if the old Casement could hold 33,000 (that's a guess, what was it's full capacity?) then they should have been issuing a Safety certificate for 18,000 but I can't remember seeing or hearing about the ground being restricted to half capacity....Double standards if you ask me.

Getting back to the original query as the above is how it should have happened, the GAA obviously told their consultants what they wanted (capacity and number of seating etc) and it was up to them to design a stadium using the Red and Green Guide for Sports Grounds NI with the help of Sport NI, their original proposal did not meet the criteria (according to Paul Scott who at that time was meant to be the expert) so was rejected after being initially passed. After a long episode of no Government and rowing with planners the Design team believed they cracked the Safety Issue and with a redesign and submitted back into Planning to where it's currently at, so was the design team at fault for the initial design? did planners deal with the scheme they way they should have? Does this fall back as the GAA's fault being the client? I'm sure there was a lot more that went on that we don't know about and probably never will...(that's what i do know)

As a GAA man and a Gael from Ulster I (my opinion) want the new stadium build ASAP, I believe majority people want the same (except on here). I don't know what the capacity will be but i hope it's over 30,000 (designed safely of course), I don't know who'll cough up the extra cash for it (do a whip around, just don't do it on the GAA Board...lol) and lastly unless they have bought up houses and land around the proposed stadium I can't see how they can achieve anything over the 18,000 mark that was talked about in previous years...so yeah we're no further on

[imtommygunn]

Did we not give it away though rather than it being removed from us?(maybe I am wrong on this but that was my understanding?) ok that was probably on the back of promises mind you.

Either way, it's a part of this clusterfcuk that is a joke.

I agree. Antrim county board culpable too. No one has covered themselves in glory here.

[JPGJOHNNYG]

Correct me if i'm wrong but was planning or temporary (if such a thing exists) planning was granted only to have a change of heart, I believe that was why Antrim/Ulster GAA closed Casement then as they believed the scheme was about to start. Paul Scott of Sport NI claimed that the GAA and Councillors were trying to bully him into approving the planning when he had safety concerns with the proposal, you cannot use the field of play as part of your evacuation or as a safe place as the red and green guides state you must evacuate the stadium in 8 mins. Using software they can calculate the movement from the stands to safely outside the stadium and according to their software this could not be achieved due to the surrounding area around the stadium, there simply was not enough room for everyone to spill out onto the streets without it backing up back into the ground.

What i can't get my head around is how this was allowed in the old existing Casement but was not ok in the new proposed stadium, so it was ok to have a crush in the old ground but not the new one. I know some of the new laws probably came out after the Ground was constructed which is fair enough but surely through time they should have been given a time limit to sort this out. Belfast City Council are responsible for issuing a Safety certificate for a match day and the proper way of dealing with this is to reduce the capacity for the game, so if the old Casement could hold 33,000 (that's a guess, what was it's full capacity?) then they should have been issuing a Safety certificate for 18,000 but I can't remember seeing or hearing about the ground being restricted to half capacity....Double standards if you ask me.

Getting back to the original query as the above is how it should have happened, the GAA obviously told their consultants what they wanted (capacity and number of seating etc) and it was up to them to design a stadium using the Red and Green Guide for Sports Grounds NI with the help of Sport NI, their original proposal did not meet the criteria (according to Paul Scott who at that time was meant to be the expert) so was rejected after being initially passed. After a long episode of no Government and rowing with planners the Design team believed they cracked the Safety Issue and with a redesign and submitted back into Planning to where it's currently at, so was the design team at fault for the initial design? did planners deal with the scheme they way they should have? Does this fall back as the GAA's fault being the client? I'm sure there was a lot more that went on that we don't know about and probably never will...(that's what i do know)

As a GAA man and a Gael from Ulster I (my opinion) want the new stadium build ASAP, I believe majority people want the same (except on here). I don't know what the capacity will be but i hope it's over 30,000 (designed safely of course), I don't know who'll cough up the extra cash for it (do a whip around, just don't do it on the GAA Board...lol) and lastly unless they have bought up houses and land around the proposed stadium I can't see how they can achieve anything over the 18,000 mark that was talked about in previous years...so yeah we're no further on

I never understood why buying a few strategic houses to improve flow wasnt suggested. Isnt there a lot of land at the nearby leisure centre in the event of an emergency that could also be used to further help evacuation flow or even open up access to Riverdale. The lack of alternative thought from the GAA/design team is staggering considering the delays and now additional costs.

[general_lee]

I take it demolishing/updating the current structures/terracing and replacing them with covered seating  that's meets H&S it is out of the question? Because other than that  I can't see where the additional funding will come from, disappointed with the GAA hq tbh.

[Art Mc Crory’s Sofa]

We need to acknowledge these white elephant projects are achieving f**k all. Pairc Ui Choamh is the same clusterfuck. It's time the top brass reeled in the provinces and county boards over their spending. The amount of cash being pissed up the wall currently is no joke.

If we all leave county bias at the door it's centrally located stadia we need in each province that can facilitate neutral matches. Building large, resource sucking stadiums on the periphery of the country with little in the way of appeal to facilitating neutral games is pointless. PUC, casement and McHale in reality are large vanity projects for those involved which have been a hangman's noose for the county and provincial (casement) boards that pushed them.

Semple and Limerick host a large number of matches each year and have obvious benefits of being close to major road infrastructure. Yet both are rotting into the ground whilst an inaccessible 100million stadium in cork city lies empty. Casement will be the exact same. A lovely looking stadium that will be full once a year at best, maybe only once every 2 but will lie idle the vast majority of the time. Really the home of Ulster GAA should be at Dungannon or Armagh. Centrally located in province and close to good road infrastructure. Clones is the home of the GAA because at the time it was the central point in the northern rail network, making it an accessible site for fans to travel too. It was a logical, rational choice to have it as the home of the Ulster GAA. Now once again a rational and logical decision should be made to abandon the large scale casement project and invest the 60 odd million in a centrally located stadium that can accommodate both a county's home matches and a large number of neutral club and county, womens, underage and hurling matches that means unlike the cork debacle we can actually get some use out of the damn thing.

[Tony Baloney]

Art, take your common sense approach elsewhere. No room for it here! Let's spend a pile of money we don't have on a big shiny thing.

[imtommygunn]

We need to acknowledge these white elephant projects are achieving f**k all. Pairc Ui Choamh is the same clusterfuck. It's time the top brass reeled in the provinces and county boards over their spending. The amount of cash being pissed up the wall currently is no joke.

If we all leave county bias at the door it's centrally located stadia we need in each province that can facilitate neutral matches. Building large, resource sucking stadiums on the periphery of the country with little in the way of appeal to facilitating neutral games is pointless. PUC, casement and McHale in reality are large vanity projects for those involved which have been a hangman's noose for the county and provincial (casement) boards that pushed them.

Semple and Limerick host a large number of matches each year and have obvious benefits of being close to major road infrastructure. Yet both are rotting into the ground whilst an inaccessible 100million stadium in cork city lies empty. Casement will be the exact same. A lovely looking stadium that will be full once a year at best, maybe only once every 2 but will lie idle the vast majority of the time. Really the home of Ulster GAA should be at Dungannon or Armagh. Centrally located in province and close to good road infrastructure. Clones is the home of the GAA because at the time it was the central point in the northern rail network, making it an accessible site for fans to travel too. It was a logical, rational choice to have it as the home of the Ulster GAA. Now once again a rational and logical decision should be made to abandon the large scale casement project and invest the 60 odd million in a centrally located stadium that can accommodate both a county's home matches and a large number of neutral club and county, womens, underage and hurling matches that means unlike the cork debacle we can actually get some use out of the damn thing.

Great post.

[BennyCake]

Art, take your common sense approach elsewhere. No room for it here! Let's spend a pile of money we don't have on a big shiny thing.

Yeah Art, ye big eejit.

GAA top brass doing what the old British empire used to do (or will do again with thon bridge to Scotland), building the worlds biggest buildings, bridges, castles, etc, to showcase their might and power... while the people (the clubs) starve.

[clonadmad]

We need to acknowledge these white elephant projects are achieving f**k all. Pairc Ui Choamh is the same clusterfuck. It's time the top brass reeled in the provinces and county boards over their spending. The amount of cash being pissed up the wall currently is no joke.

If we all leave county bias at the door it's centrally located stadia we need in each province that can facilitate neutral matches. Building large, resource sucking stadiums on the periphery of the country with little in the way of appeal to facilitating neutral games is pointless. PUC, casement and McHale in reality are large vanity projects for those involved which have been a hangman's noose for the county and provincial (casement) boards that pushed them.

Semple and Limerick host a large number of matches each year and have obvious benefits of being close to major road infrastructure. Yet both are rotting into the ground whilst an inaccessible 100million stadium in cork city lies empty. Casement will be the exact same. A lovely looking stadium that will be full once a year at best, maybe only once every 2 but will lie idle the vast majority of the time. Really the home of Ulster GAA should be at Dungannon or Armagh. Centrally located in province and close to good road infrastructure. Clones is the home of the GAA because at the time it was the central point in the northern rail network, making it an accessible site for fans to travel too. It was a logical, rational choice to have it as the home of the Ulster GAA. Now once again a rational and logical decision should be made to abandon the large scale casement project and invest the 60 odd million in a centrally located stadium that can accommodate both a county's home matches and a large number of neutral club and county, womens, underage and hurling matches that means unlike the cork debacle we can actually get some use out of the damn thing.

It's news to me that both Semple and the Gaelic grounds are "rotting into the ground"

When Thurles has the best sod in the country outside of croke park and there's been nearly €15m spend on it in the last 5 years as well being the only stadium outside of CP to have Hawkeye,The Gaelic Grounds is also fit for purpose,held a Munster final last year and is well able to cater for attendances,far in excess of what is ever needed in Ulster.

[trailer]

There's no money for it.
There's no room for it.
There's no need for it.
It's gone on too long.
It has seen Antrim's greatest monetary asset removed from them.
It has left us with no county ground.

There is money and plenty of it. The longer it delays the more it will cost. Sooner it is built the cheaper it'll be.
There's no room for it. ? Doesn't make sense
There is of course a need. There's not a decent GAA stadium in the North capable of hold USFC SF & Finals.
Yes it's gone on too long, more reason to get it done.
Antrim gave it up
And your solution to having no county ground is not to build one?

If we took this attitude to everything nothing would ever be built. Everything has a cost. Sometimes the cost isn't relevant.