Editorial: ​Giving £400m to a GAA stadium at Casement would have been an outrage

For fans of football, the Casement Park stadium saga has been a sorry one.

​The body that represents them, the IFA, threw its weight behind a massive stadium being built there, the only one large enough to host Euros 2028 games.

It is a great shame that no such matches will be played in this part of a UK that has been the main country behind that successful hosting bid, given its massive influence in the world of soccer.

But Windsor Park is not big enough to host such an event, so a long delayed upgrade to a GAA stadium, Casement, was the only way to achieve that outcome.

There are many reasons for this sorry state of affairs. One was the failure to agree a stadium that could be used by the three big sports, football, GAA and rugby. Not everyone’s heart was in such a combined venture. Another was the way that a single stadium became associated with the Maze site, controversial both because of its location well outside Belfast and its past associations with terror.

Perhaps the biggest factor in this shambles was the huge delay by the GAA in upgrading Casement. Foolishly, it latterly played the victim rather than immediately making clear it would pay at least pro rata what it was pledged to pay when the various sports were all given money for stadiums.

The UK government in turn would have been justified in paying its original £62 million commitment, upgraded for inflation – thus £90 million plus. Perhaps a bit more to secure the Euros. And the Irish government, never slow to show up the UK, could have funded the difference. Instead, the GAA was not even asked in numerous BBC interviews if it would pay more, let alone put under pressure by others.

The stadium was now set to cost £400m+. Such use of taxpayers’ cash would have been an outrage days after tens of millions were pledged to another Sinn Fein demand, a Pat Finucane inquiry.