Northern Ireland Stadium News

President of the Irish Football Association Raymond Kennedy has indicated his preference for a new build stadium to be built as part of Ormeau Park.

With question marks over both the Maze plans and the future use of Windsor Park for international football, Kennedy said that the Irish FA would go along with any of the Belfast plans. His comments have been seen by some as a rebuke to the IFA’s Cheif Executive, Howard Wells, who has consistently backed the Maze plans and is rumoured to be seeking employment elsewhere.

“Beggars can’t be choosers. I want a stadium to play football matches and I want them in Northern Ireland, not anywhere else.

Belfast City Council have come up with five sites and I would take any one of them.”

Raymond Kennedy, Irish FA President

He also said that the Irish FA will be meeting with Linfield football club and the government to discuss the disputed contract that, on the surface, seems to tie the Irish FA to playing international football matches at Windsor Park for another 80 years.

“We have to look at where we are going to play our games in the short-term and that has to be a refurbishment at Windsor Park.

We’ll be meeting the government shortly and if that short-term agreement with them comes to pass then maybe we’ll look at a long-term solution.

I know Linfield have plans for a longer term solution - I don’t know whether we can buy into that or not.”

Raymond Kennedy, Irish FA President

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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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.

Culture minister Edwin Poots was yesterday foiled in an attempt to “abuse” the democratic process by manipulating the DCAL Executive Committee to justify a publicity stunt promoting the Maze stadium plans later in the day.

A meeting of the committee was called for the architects and consultants to show off some pretty pictures (artist’s impressions) of what a new stadium could look like and then turn them over to the media to circulate. Members of the committee were furious that they were being used like this and walked out of the meeting, pointing out the absurdity of having a meeting like this without any kind of business case or feasibility study for the plans available after all this time, despite such details having been repeatedly requested.

The real agenda seems to have been using the meeting as a pretext for a news conference that would once more build up the hype around the Maze Stadium with the media following their usual unquestioning attitude to the plans.

“It seems to me that this committee is being used this morning as a platform to justify a PR exercise outside this room and to use the committee this way is an abuse of the democratic process.”
Nelson McCausland (DUP), DCAL Committee member

“This is like being asked to give an opinion on a car you are buying for someone without having seen anything other than how it looks.
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We are not a plaything to be used in a political game of chess by the Minister. Treating a Committee in this way is corrosive to the democratic process and makes a mockery of DUP claims of accountable Ministers.”
David McNarry (UUP), DCAL Committee Deputy Chariman

Well said and well done. It’s about time someone stood up and questioned the minister’s unwavering support of this expensive white elephant. It’s just a pity that instead of doing their job over the last three years the media have simply been regurgitating government press releases, or maybe we wouldn’t have had to wait this long for it to happen.