Broad approval from diverse sporting interests provided the early testimony to the appeal of the Government's decision to build a national stadium as part of a campus of sporting excellence.

An aspiration articulated at regular intervals in the last 40 years is now set, it seems, to become reality, and the reaction from a sphere of our society often fragmented by petty differences was sufficiently reassuring to convince Bertie Ahern that he is taking the public with him in his decision to commit £230 million of public money to the project.

Most of the opposition in a sporting context came predictably from the FAI, who see in the plan a diminution of their initiative to build their own stadium at City West at a cost of £65 million, within the next three years.

From the Government's point of view, the co-operation of the FAI is highly desirable if not absolutely crucial to the success of the national stadium. It is fair to suggest that the proposed facility at Abbotstown will have more of an international than a national dimension. And since soccer is perceived as giving Irish sport its highest international profile, the pressures to have Mick McCarthy's team play their home games there will be considerable.

Towards this end, Jim McDaid, the Minister for Sport, made it known some time ago that cash inducements would be on offer to soccer clubs to use their influence to have the City West project parked. As yet, however, that offer has gone unheeded.

Ahern said that, at a working breakfast yesterday with the senior representatives of all the major Irish sporting organisations, the FAI gave the venture qualified support and intimated that all soccer events likely to exceed the 45,000 capacity at Eircom Stadium would be re-routed to Stadium Ireland.

That minimum figure was later increased to 60,000 by the FAI, who added pointedly that statistics proved events capable of attracting this kind of attendance occurred only every seven years.

The IRFU almost certainly will have no hesitation in abandoning plans to redevelop Lansdowne Road if the national stadium comes on stream on the premise that it would free funds to cope with the ever-increasing financial demands of the professional game.

With a modern 80,000 stadium of its own, the GAA has appreciatively less reason to be excited by the new facility, but Danny Lynch, the association's PRO, says he can foresee a situation in which they may have reason to stage at least some of their games there.

It is hoped to develop Morton Stadium in Santry to a point where it can accommodate events up to grand prix standard. Effectively that means that the only occasion Stadium Ireland will be used for athletics is to stage major international events like the World or European track and field championships.

It is this prospect of playing host to the sporting world and the spin-off advantages to tourism and the national profile which convinces the Government of the need to press ahead with the venture. Undeniably the project is driven by the Taoiseach's deep passion for sport and the necessity of putting in place a facility to ensure that Irish athletes, and those who watch them, are not disadvantaged in relation to the rest of the developed world. The man who as a schoolboy went around with a bucket collecting money for Billy Morton's dream of building an international athletics stadium for Ireland has never lost his idealism. Now, in a position where he can influence Government spending, he is determined to indulge his interest.

Robert Kennedy remarked in the 1960s that international sport was an arm of political power and, when it came to establishing national profile, sporting success was almost as important as gross national product. That was a philosophy which didn't interest Ahern's predecessors, even those who had an involvement with sport.

Now this project is to be used as something of a national flagship. And for sports people right across the spectrum, that is a development which deserves widespread support.

Just as those involved in sport for years questioned the apathy of senior politicians and their refusal to fund it in anything other than a derisory manner, it is right that those outside it should now question the propriety of committing £230 million of State funds to a new stadium.

Ahern took the point at yesterday's press briefing, but said that the money involved represented only a fraction of the cost involved in the projected development of the country's infrastructure.

He said that those medium and long-term developments had been costed at £18.1 billion and that the expenditure incurred in constructing a facility which would stand as a national asset for future generations had to be viewed in that context.

Almost every sporting organisation in the country, big as well as small, will welcome the decision to address a long-felt need and build a national indoor arena capable of staging any number of events from sport to music to commercial exhibitions.

Inevitably, however, it is the success of the outdoor stadium which will colour posterity's verdict on this the most ambitious undertaking ever envisaged in Irish sport.

There are those who say that if the national stadium is built and the FAI proceed with their plans to construct Eircom Park the country will have three major stadiums when redevelopment work at Croke Park is completed.

The reality, however, is that, for all the platitudes, Croke Park is likely to stay out of bounds to both soccer and rugby in the immediate future. And the problems of processing the planning application and the costs of promoting the venture raise at least some doubts about the FAI's venture.

That is not to minimise either the vision or the commitment of those who have set themselves the task of rectifying a situation which by right ought to have been addressed long before now.

The experience of some of national rugby unions in Britain is that the cost of it going alone in the construction of stadiums can threaten even the most endowed financial bodies. When their initial indignation has subsided, the FAI may do well to ponder the point.