Nothing has happened in nearly two years to progress plans to build a new Casement Park GAA stadium in west Belfast and a decision must be made quickly, Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn has said.
A decision is “a priority because a decision needs to be made”, said Mr Benn, taking his first House of Commons questions in new role since the general election.
“The fact is that the British government have inherited a commitment to hosting the Euros at Casement Park,” he told DUP MP Sammy Wilson and SDLP MP Claire Hanna.
“It is now a year and three quarters since Uefa awarded that right to Northern Ireland, and to the United Kingdom and Ireland, but nothing has happened during the year and three quarters since then.”
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However, he kept his options open about the shape of the final decision: “We are left with a situation in which the cost has gone through the roof, and even if we had the money, we do not know if we could build it in time.
“That is why the Government are looking at it, and that is why I said it was a priority to make a decision,” said Mr Benn, who told the Galway-born Ms Hanna that he wished Armagh well in Sunday’s All-Ireland football final.
“I think we all wish Armagh well in the All-Ireland final. The Executive are committed to the Casement Park project – it has been a commitment for over a decade now – but it has not progressed.
“Windsor Park got an upgrade, Ravenhill got an upgrade. It is important that Casement Park is built. That is why I said on my recent visit that one way or another that project needs to be completed”
Criticising the project, Mr Wilson said “committing £320 million for a stadium to host five matches” when there are huge hospital waiting lists and other social needs is an “indefensible use of public money”.
The DUP and Conservative MPs have focused recently on the influence over the project held by UK prime minister Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, Sue Gray, who was a senior civil servant in Northern Ireland for a time.
Mr Wilson sought assurances that the British government “has not been influenced by any personal interventions” by Gray “for whom this is a personal project”.
The DUP and Conservatives have accused Gray of a breach of standards regulation over the issue, though the exact nature of the alleged offence is not clear.
In her question to the Secretary of State, the SDLP, Claire Hanna said the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) “is overwhelmingly a force for good across our island”.
GAA fans in Northern Ireland have been “let down by a decade of Stormont dither”, by “sniping” similar to Mr Wilson’s intervention and by the last Conservative government.
The work at Casement could be well under way by now, the South Belfast MP said, demanding an assurance from Mr Benn “that Casement will ultimately be built”.
