Editorial: Answers are indeed needed on the Casement Park stadium decision

Anyone who watched the BBC One Newsline programme on Tuesday evening would have thought that the funding of Casement Park was merely a joyous story for Northern Ireland.

In the lead report which lasted 12 minutes there was gushing from the IFA and gushing from people on the streets around both Casement and even Windsor Park. There was of course gushing from the GAA.

The report rightly examined the deliverability and cost of the project but a GAA representative was not asked if the wealthy sporting and cultural organisation would up its financial contribution – or, if he was asked, it was not in the clip. The BBC report did show a Northern Ireland supporters' spokesperson gently insert a sceptical note, with his reasonable observation that football supporters want big games played in football stadia.

Have the GAA not had similar expectations? Indeed they went further, and are so embedded in Irish nationalism that for decades they had bans on their members playing 'foreign games' such as soccer and from serving in UK security forces.

As we report on our front page, plenty of people are not gushing about this stadium plan, including the leader of the largest unionist party, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson. The Northern Ireland secretary Chris Heaton-Harris has merely grinningly said that funding for Casement will be found. What about the soaring cost at a time of extreme financial constraint? The original funding pledge of £62 million if, index linked for inflation as it should be, brings that subsidy to around £90m. As the price of the project has spiralled far beyond that level, the UK should ask the GAA and others to fund the gap. If Ireland wants to help, as increasingly it likes to do with NI projects, so be it.

This will be a huge asset for the GAA, leaving them with NI’s best sport stadium, whether Casement is delivered on time for the Euros ​​​or not.