Harney red card for the Bertie Bowl plan
Monday December 17 2001
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern will be told by Ms Harney that she cannot give her backing to the the £550m Campus Ireland plan of which the national stadium is a key element.
Senior PD sources told the Irish Independent: "There will be no agreement to this by our party in Government before the General Election."
Ms Harney said a few days ago that as far as her party was concerned, there were "different priorities" at the moment in view of the changed economic circumstances.
"I cannot envisage a situation where this would be a priority," she said.
The independent consultants' report, which was commissioned at the PDs' insistence, has still to come before the Cabinet.
It had been expected that the review by the High Point Rendel group would be brought to the Cabinet by Sports Minister Dr Jim McDaid tomorrow. But Government sources have confirmed that this will not now happen until January.
A top-level steering group examining the report will make a recommendation to Dr McDaid, who is expected to meet the Taoiseach, Tanaiste and Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy in advance of a Cabinet decision.
The report is understood to be highly critical of parts of the project and questions the economic viability of the national stadium.
It calls for further study of the cost implications and urges renewed consultations with the Football Association of Ireland and the Irish Rugby Football Union about the kind of stadium capacity their organisations want.
It is believed to recommend that the proposed 80,000 capacity stadium be reduced by 20,000.
And it comes out in favour of more international expertise being brought in before final commitments are made to the project.
Mr Ahern said only last week that he remained "as committed as ever" to the Abbotstown complex.
The Tanaiste had expressed her misgivings about the Sports Campus Ireland project in the summer and the Taoiseach agreed to her demands for the independent report.
However, it is known that Ms Harney is even more opposed to the project as a result of the review.
In addition, it is believed that as the next general election is now less than six months away, the Progressive Democrats are keen to emphasise their separate identity before the eyes of the electorate and, indeed, they have already made it abundantly clear that they are not prepared to entertain any possibility of pre-election pacts.
Their deep suspicion about the economic viability of the Sports Campus Ireland project, therefore, affords them an opportunity to stand apart from the wholehearted support for the idea within Fianna Fail.
Fine Gael has vehemently opposed the whole project and says that it will scrap the plan altogether if it gets into Government.
It wants the money which would be spent on Abbotstown to be used, instead, for the improvement of sports facilities throughout the country.
Labour is not as vehemently opposed to the project, although it is wary of the cost implications and believes there should be a scaling down in the size of the plans.
While work on the new swimming pool which will be used for the Special Olympics in 2003 is under way at the Abbotstown site, a large question mark now hangs over the rest of the plan, until after the election.
- Gene McKenna Political Correspondent
