‘Crunch week’ for decision, says Michelle O’Neill

It is a “crunch week” for a decision to be made on funding for Casement Park and Northern Ireland’s public finances, First Minister Michelle O’Neill has said.

She was speaking after meeting the Secretary of State Hilary Benn in Belfast.

Next week the government will publish a Spending Review, which will lay out funding for Whitehall departments and the devolved nations for the next three years.

It is being billed as the juncture for the government to state whether it will make a financial contribution to the redevelopment of the west Belfast stadium.

On Monday Sinn Féin’s finance minister John O’Dowd said he believed the Treasury is in “solution-finding mode” when it comes to agreeing on a figure.

Asked for her view, O’Neill said they needed to “wait and see” the final outcome but that there needed to be a push from all sides to get Casement Park over the line.

Stormont’s Communities Minister Gordon Lyons reiterated a promised £62.5m from the Stormont executive, the GAA say it will pay £15m while the Irish government has pledged around £43m.

Casement Park, with a proposed 34,500 capacity, had been earmarked to host football games at the Euro 2028 football tournament but, with the project on hold, the plan has been shelved.

Lyons has defended his handling of the planned Casement redevelopment and insisted the hold-up is not his fault.

On Monday, he said the GAA would need to make its plans for Casement Park more affordable if the UK government fails to cover the gap for the current proposed rebuild.

“I’ve made it very, very clear as sports minister, I want to see more money for sports infrastructure in Northern Ireland,” the minister said.

“But what we do need to make sure is that any additional public funding that comes forward for sport is done on a fair and equitable basis.

“I think we had a fair and equitable basis for the funding of sport back in 2011 when the funding for Windsor [Park] and for Ravenhill and Casement was set out.

“I welcome additional funding for sport, but it should be done on a fair and on an equitable basis.”

In 2012, stadium designers were appointed to the project and it was expected the new Casement Park would be built by 2015. But it didn’t turn out that way.

The first big obstacle came in 2014, when the High Court overturned planning permission for the project.

Local residents had lodged a legal challenge over objections to the stadium’s size – they said it would block out light from local homes and cause serious traffic disruption.

Then, in 2015, came possibly the most contentious year of the Casement Park project.

Firstly, it emerged that a Safety Technical Group (STG) formed to oversee safety issues around the new stadium had not approved the design plans due to concerns over how long it would take people to leave the ground in an emergency.

Later, one of the STG members, safety expert Paul Scott, told a Northern Ireland Assembly committee that he had been put “under pressure” to approve the plans by government officials.

He also complained of bullying- he later settled an industrial tribunal case with Sport NI.

With the original Casement plan now scrapped, the GAA went to work on plans for a new stadium, revising the capacity down from 38,000 to about 34,500.

It submitted a fresh application for planning permission in 2017, which was granted in 2021.

Finally, in 2022, local residents lost a legal challenge against the new project against the plan – the stadium could now go ahead.

Since then funding issues have plagued the project.