In last Saturday's Irish Times, the chairman of the company charged with the delivery of the Taoiseach's Blanchardstown stadium project, Mr Paddy Teahon, wrote ". . . the people of Ireland are entitled to absolute assurance that their money is being wisely used in their interests". They certainly are, but will, I fear, have drawn little comfort from Mr Teahon's confused defence of this increasingly bizarre undertaking.

Mr Teahon leads off with two assertions of what he describes as "facts". The first is that the project will cost £350 million, not the £1 billion estimate being deployed in the media. The second is that "the project is not being built at the expense of anything else". This is because it is being built out of a budget surplus, apparently.

If projects financed out of a budget surplus are free (through not being built at the expense of anything else), it does not matter if it costs £350 million or £1 billion, either figure being comfortably below the surplus. Capital is free in times of budget surplus, we are invited to believe, and the utilisation of land, labour and capital in the construction of stadiums has no opportunity costs whatsoever. There are simply no alternative uses, in times of budget surplus, in Mr Teahon's calculus.

Not having studied the dismal science formally, I can offer no more than a lay person's reaction to this, on the face of it, extraordinary breakthrough in the analysis of public finances. The budget surplus or deficit is the cash flow position of the Government. Many companies have positive cash flow when the economy is going well.

Capital expenditure is, in the Teahon analysis, free to these companies. How else can it be free to the Government in the same circumstances? No attention need be paid to the value or benefit of the capital projects, since there are no costs. No alternative projects have been forgone.

The reality is that land, labour and capital resources are particularly scarce in Ireland at present. When these resources are commandeered to build stadiums or other sports facilities, they cease to be available for other purposes, such as hospitals, schools, or housing. Unless the moon is made of green cheese.

The use of the £350 million figure by Mr Teahon is an attempt to muddy the waters, and contradicts the figures given by the Minister for Tourism and Sport, Dr McDaid, on several occasions in the Dail.

He put the total at £550 million, made up of £350 million in Exchequer cost, £150 million in private sector investment and a £50 million private donation. This total does not, however, include any value for the land (land is free in times of budget surplus - people are giving it away all over the place), costs of relocating existing State services off the site, costs of road upgrades, costs of public transport links, or the costs of inducing the FAI, the GAA and other bodies to stage fixtures in the Bertie Bowl component of the Sports Campus Ireland project.

The land alone is a huge cost component. The site runs to 500 acres, and development land in such a fine location has been fetching up to £500,000 per acre around the outskirts of Dublin in recent times. It could thus be worth up to £250 million.

The costs of relocating State services off the site have been put at no less than £160 million, while the FAI and GAA have been promised over £100 million between them at this stage, the latter as an inducement not to play various matches at their fine new Croke Park venue. Add the road and rail connections, and it is not difficult to see where the fears of a £1 billion bill are coming from. Mr J.P. McManus's £50 million donation will do well to cover the cost of consultants and project managers.

The Government's current intention appears to be to review the capital cost estimates, and to consider the scale of the project afresh when this has been done. This is only doing half the job. The benefits as well as the costs need to be reassessed, and if the benefits do not exceed the costs, the project is not worth doing.

In the case of the stadium element, it is difficult to see any incremental benefits from switching fixtures to the new Bowl. If you have one car and one garage, you can build a second one and use it occasionally, but without a second car it does not really make any sense. Depending on the plans for Lansdowne Road, a no-frills 45,000-seat stadium appropriately located may be necessary - such as is being built by Manchester City for £113 million.

Next Sunday the Gaelic Grounds in Limerick will host the final of the hurling league. Most fans would agree that this venue, and many more like it throughout the country in the various codes, could do with some serious upgrading. A fraction of the cost of the Taoiseach's Folly would pay for the renovation of the country's existing stock of stadiums and for the upgrading of sports facilities in the community generally.

Until we find that we have too few stadiums to cope with the flood of fixtures, there is simply no point in going ahead. This project should be scrapped, and the public spared the Alice in Wonderland economics of Mr Teahon.

Pat Rabbitte is Labour TD for Dublin South West