AFTER 13 years and two months of waiting, local football is finally going to receive £36.2m of public funding to improve facilities..with the promise of more to come.
As revealed in The Irish News yesterday, Communities Minister Gordon Lyons made the announcement at Windsor Park yesterday afternoon in front of an assembled audience of invited guests.
There was, however, no mention of the Casement Park project. The west Belfast venue has been nominated by the Irish Football Association to host five Euro 2028 finals games as part of a joint venture with England, Scotland and Wales.
However, the IFA can look forward to receiving financial help from the public purse to build a new national training centre, another project that is long overdue and one international manager Michael O’Neill has been pushing for.
“I am committed to fully utilising the £36.2m and to seeking to sustain the fund with further Investment from the (Stormont) Executive, from within the football sector and from across local government”, said Lyons.
“I expect the first projects to receive letters of offer from my department within this financial year and to start spending their award in the 2025-2026 financial year.
“Work is progressing at pace on the national training centre for football to host elite training for our national men’s, women’s and youth teams to drive skills for people involved at all levels of the game.
“I will be saying more on this in the coming weeks.”
The Casement Park project is a pressing one as the IFA revealed last December that the bulk of the work must be started in June if the venue is to be ready to host Euro 2028 games, otherwise Uefa will use an alternative venue.
An announcement is due soon and it is also anticipated that the minister will provide more funds - thought by insiders to be more than £100m - to local football to improve facilities across the board.
Whilst overdue, the promise of funding was warmly welcomed by representatives of Sports Direct Premiership clubs in attendance yesterday and will be seen as a massive boost to the Irish League and other strata of football.
Local football has been on the rise in recent years with several clubs moving to a full-time footing, but at a cost.
Only Linfield, Crusaders and Carrick Rangers posted a profit in the year ending December 2023 and the total losses posted by the 12 top-flight clubs was £3.3m.
The minister insists checks and balances will be put in place to ensure money from the public purse will not be squandered.
“A lot of this has to be finalised in terms of the exact process, but, importantly, what I said in my speech yesterday is that we want to make sure that clubs are on a sound financial footing moving forward.
“For example, I don’t want to give a club a lot of money to make a lot of improvements, create a great big stadium at grounds but then they have no income then in order to maintain that.
“It’s not what I want to see because that’s not good at all in terms of use of public resources.
“So all the usual rules will apply but we will be putting emphasis on making sure that where we give additional resources it’s the same.”
Lyons has been very proactive in delivering the outstanding sub-regional stadia funding, along with Executive colleagues, and the promise of more funding is good news for football.
The East Antrim MLA urged critics not to take a myopic view of his pledge to release substantial funding, insisting he can defend his announcement despite pressures on the public purse from other departments.
“Yes. First of all because this has been money set aside for a long time.
“This was promised a long time ago and the value of it has already decreased over that period of time. A commitment was made and it’s important that we deliver on it.
“Secondly, yes there are huge pressures on the public purse. There is clearly a difference between resource and capital as well, but in terms of the capital funding that is available I genuinely believe that we are creating a legacy for the future, we are taking pressure off other departments.
“Getting more young people involved can only be a positive thing; you’re helping them with their educational opportunities, you’re improving their health outcomes and in some cases it’s diversionary, away from other things that they might otherwise be doing.
“So I do see this as a real investment and I think it’s actually very short-sighted to say that an investment in this is taking money away from where it is needed elsewhere.
“This will have a long term benefit for people right across Northern Ireland and that’s why I’m determined to get it done.”
