Northern Ireland Stadium News

Despite revelations that Edwin Poots’s Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure has spent nearly £3.5 million on promoting a new stadium in his back yard, the press are hinting that the white elephant is edging ever-nearer to it’s ultimate demise after the DCAL Permanent Secretary Paul Sweeney refused to endorse the plans.

According to the Sunday Life, “The absence of support from key civil servants in the departments principally involved in the project … is likely to put the final nail in its coffin.”

Finance Minister Peter Robinson is due to make a recommendation to the Executive before he takes over the position of First Minister later this month, however he has recently hinted that the Maze could be redeveloped through other means that wouldn’t require the construction of a national stadium, suggesting he may already have a decision in mind.

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Head of the Strategic Investment Board and Head Cheerleader for the Maze, Tony Whitehead, has resigned.  Some are heralding this as confirmation that, following the reshuffle of the DUP’s leadership and executive team, the proposals to build a stadium at the Maze have “collapsed”.

Coming shortly after the announcement that there will be no olympic football at the Maze, even if plans for a stadium do go ahead, there is certainly a feeling that the Maze is not the done deal we were told it was over 3 years ago.

Add your voice to the chorus and sign the petition.

It’s 2-and-a-half years now since direct rule ministers told us that the Maze was “the only viable option” and yet we don’t seem any closer to seeing a business case for it.

We were told earlier this year that a business case would be forthcoming in the Autumn and then that it would be with the Finance Minister Peter Robinson in December. Instead all we’ve seen are attempts by the Minister to use his comittee for cheap publicity stunts, in what the members of that committee said amounted to an “abuse of the democratic process.”

With the Northern Ireland Executive’s budget announced today there’s still no sign of this famed business case. All DCAL are saying is that the business case is “still being considered” and that they don’t know when it will be ready.

As you can probably guess, StadiumForBelfast has suspicions that DCAL have simply realised that the business case is simply unworkable and, unprepared to admit defeat, are working away desperately trying to ’sex up’ their dossier. Surely they will surprise us all and those issues were all in our imaginations (and yours). Even if they don’t, sure transport, atmosphere, economics and of course the sporting experience don’t really matter anyway.

Time to stop the madness. Sign the petition.