THERE’S a website out there entitled ‘Are The Brits At It Again?’ that comprises just three simple lines of text that never change.
They read:
‘YES.
Our sources have confirmed that the Brits are indeed at it again.
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It has been 0 days since the Brits were last at it.’
They were very much at it on Friday.
An episode of White House drama The West Wing popularised the idea of governments having a Take Out The Trash Day.
It is when they bury as much bad news as possible at once, usually late on a Friday evening when they’re about to go on a break from the public chambers.
In context against the decision not to grant a public inquiry into the 1997 murder of Bellaghy club chairman Sean Brown, the British government’s announcement that Casement Park will not be funded by the UK Treasury seems almost insignificant.
There was initial optimism when Labour took over in the summer that things might be different.
We should have known better.
It is why any genuine optimism around the redevelopment of Casement has long felt misplaced.
Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday Politics show, GAA president Jarlath Burns was uncharacteristically downbeat.
The former Armagh captain conceded that he pretty much knew the game was up six months ago.
Beneath a ticking clock the tender documents were sitting ready to go out.
Each day that passed was a day closer to confirmation of the news that arrived shortly after 7pm on Friday.
Anyone looking at the thing objectively already knew.
Euro 2028 takes place in three years and nine months’ time with the new stadium required to be ready for test events around a year before that.
Time was up long ago.
So what now? The GAA, emboldened by Sinn Féin ministers, remains insistent that Casement Park will be built.
Such confidence doesn’t belong.
Again, look at it objectively.
We don’t know what the planned 34,500-capacity stadium will cost exactly but we do know it’s creeping north of £250m.
The one guarantee is that between now and whatever date a digger might roll down the Andytown Road and start ripping stuff up to start it properly, the price isn’t going down.
Negotiations with the British government about funding the shortfall have been long and exhaustive.
Their cause in investing the guts of £200m would have been the hosting of Euro 2028 in Belfast.
That is now off the table.
You can only expect that their interest in funding it at a time when they’re having to made hard cuts on winter fuel allowances will collapse completely.
Stormont won’t cover the bill.
The GAA cannot fund it themselves. Anyone who thinks they can is deluded.
They have also been burned by Páirc Uí Chaoimh’s legacy of debt and would be loathe to saddle themselves for more of the same.
Downsizing to a more compact stadium for Antrim is a different conversation.
This column has argued in the past, and remains of the opinion, that that is the route that should have been taken from the beginning.
Ulster football has a home. It might need more than just a lick of paint but a proper refurb of St Tiernach’s Park is so doable with a fraction of the energy and money that has been put into Casement already.
Not having a new state-of-the-art stadium in west Belfast for Euro 2028 is a bigger disaster for the IFA than it is for the GAA.
They’re the ones who’ll feel it in four years’ time when unionism is crying about the nose missing from their face when they were the ones took the blade to it themselves.
But aside from having to go right back to the start of the planning and design process, it would put even the agreed Stormont funding of £62.5m at risk given that it was set aside for a provincial stadium to host Ulster finals and the like.
The only way the Casement Park redevelopment as we know it can be saved is if the Irish government steps in and agrees to foot the bill in its entirety.
That has political ramifications in itself. No sooner had they pledged €50m than then-DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson was out complaining about Dublin interfering in affairs north of the border. Not that anything they say should come into the equation if Dublin are willing to pay for it.
If the Irish government wants to hand a cheque to the GAA as a 32-county organisation, that’s their business.
It is a hurdle but not one that there should be much heed paid to.
But at some point, the GAA has to make a definitive call on this.
They cannot keep chasing a pipe dream forever.
The Irish government is flush with money. They’ve so much of it they don’t know what to do with it, so much so that they don’t even want the €13bn that Apple are being made give them.
So this thing is quite simple now.
If Dublin is prepared to step in and build Casement, do it. Do it now.
Do it quickly. Do it decisively.
Just bloody do it.
We will have our answer in a matter of weeks.
Delays are completely unnecessary. Planning has been passed. Tender documents are ready. The only thing missing is the money.
The GAA have been saying it’s now or never for quite a while, but it really is now.
If the Dáil wants to fund this thing, they have to do it in the morning.
No dithering, no delaying, no dancing around.
The GAA has to realise that unless the Irish government are willing to bear the full weight – which financially they very easily could – then they cannot keep going around the houses.
There has to come a point where they take the Irish government’s £43m, put their own £15m to it and do a real good job on Clones instead.
Casement Park has always been a great dream to have.
But at some point you have to wake up and smell the coffee.
Should we get to Christmas without an announcement from Dublin that they’re taking on the whole funding of the project, it has to be time to cut the losses.
There’s been more than a decade of this.
We have to use the pot or get off it now.
Enough.
