Quote from: Duine Inteacht Eile on April 12, 2023, 06:13:11 PMSorry if subsequent posts have addressed this, but when the Maze Stadium was pulled (by the bean counters at Stormont, btw), they reallocated the money to the three sporting bodies, to build their own Regional Stadia, as follows.
I'm not sure that the process being hoped for here has anything to do with the DUP. To my mind, the original £62 million is sitting there for this stadium and I'm assuming the GAA will stump up their £15 million. The planning approval is in place.
The extra money is never going to come from Stormont but possibly from another body who are pushing for the Euro bid.
What is it you think the DUP could object to? The release of the £62 million?
Ulster Rugby was granted £20m, which they used to rebuild Ravenhill.
While it having been agreed (effectively between Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness) that soccer and GAA would get equal shares, this worked out at £62.5m each.
The IFA decided to spend £26m on rebuilding Windsor, with the remaining £36.5m going towards sub-Regional stadia throughout NI, plus a national training centre.
While the GAA opted to spend all its allocation, along with £15m from its own resources, on a (then) 38k rebuild of Casement.
Now that the estimated cost of Casement has spiralled to £120m(?), no-one is sure where the extra £40-50m is going to come from. Stormont, with whom the original £145m was ring-fenced) doesn't have it without raiding other budgets, which is unlikely to get past Nationalist ministers with responsibility for schools, hospitals and housing etc, never mind Unionist ministers.
It may be that Westminster might come up with some extra dosh, in order to make it a truly UK and ROI-wide event. Which is why the IFA and GAA are united in pushing Casement - it's in both their mutual interests.
But the problem there is that if the extra money went solely to GAA without some further allocation to soccer and rugby etc, then you would effectively be "punishing" the IFA and Ulster Rugby for their competence in building Windsor and Ravenhill basically on time and within budget, while at the same time "rewarding" the GAA for their incompetence in failing even to get the first spade in the ground after a decade.
Though a newspaper report from July 2021 quoted unnamed sources at the IFA in saying that they would accept it if they (IFA) in turn got half the extra sum which the GAA are seeking. (Pragmatism, I'd guess).
Anyhow, that's it from me for now - back sometime later - if you can contain your excitement!