After the departure of Stadium Ireland's chairman and chief executive Paddy Teahon, Frank McDonald says the project should be abandoned in favour of an affordable alternative
Paddy Teahon, until this week executive chairman of Campus and Stadium Ireland Development Ltd (CSID), memorably declared that he would stake his personal reputation on the delivery of the project planned for Abbotstown at a net cost to the Exchequer of £350 million (€444m).
He made this pledge after the publication less than two months ago of a scathing report by the Government's independent consultants, High Point Rendel (HPR), which found that the project would cost taxpayers twice as much and that those in charge of delivering it were out of their depth.
HPR has wide experience of assessing the risks associated with major sports and leisure projects worldwide. Its considered view of what the Campus of Sporting Excellence at Abbotstown would cost, and of the expertise of CSID's in-house team, must count for more than the State company's special pleadings.
This week's convulsions following the publication of the Attorney General's report on the aquatic centre, and how the contract for its operation came to be awarded to a shelf company, have further undermined confidence in CSID, its modus operandi and the future of this ill-starred grand projet.
The withholding of crucial information from the assessment panel, the board of CSID and the Government; the indulgent view taken of conflicts of interest, the incompetence at the core of last year's outline bid offer and the lack of any incentive to keep costs down have all raised serious doubts Sports Campus Ireland.
When Paddy Teahon talked, as he did repeatedly, about delivering it for £350 million, precisely what was "the project" he had in mind? Did it include the full range of facilities specified in January 2000 when Bertie Ahern secured Government agreement to proceed with the Abbotstown adventure?
This would be impossible for that price tag. As HPR concluded in its assessment: "If CSID are to pursue a policy of working within a very tight fixed budget, then it is inevitable that in order to contain costs within agreed ceilings the specifications will deteriorate and/or facilities \ not be included."
So let us remind ourselves what Sports Campus Ireland was meant to comprise, as per the 1999 feasibility study by Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC): A national stadium with seating for 80,000 spectators, a 15,000-seat indoor arena, a series of multi-purpose sports halls, including tennis courts, and a sports science and medical centre.
The controversial Aquatic and Leisure Centre was added to this already ambitious list, at the Government's instigation, to provide a venue for the Special Olympics in June, 2003. And it was expanded still further by CSID to include additional tennis facilities, a golf academy, a velodrome and offices for sports organisations.
Last April, the brief issued to consortiums bidding for the overall project specified the following schedule of facilities:
80,000-seat stadium.
15,000-seat indoor arena.
Sports halls with an aggregate area of 6,900 sq metres (74,270 sq ft).
Tennis centre with 10 indoor and 20 outdoor courts.
Golf academy with indoor and outdoor practice facilities.
Velodrome with 20-metre track and seating for 500 spectators.
30 outdoor pitches of various dimensions.
Sports science centre with an area of 9,650 sq metres (103,870 sq ft).
Sports organisations' offices of 8,000 sq metres (86,110 sq ft).
All of these facilities were to be procured using a hitherto untried form of public-private partnership involving a design, build, finance, operate and maintain (DBFOM) contract with the "preferred bidder". This was CSID's idea, as the original Government decision was based on using a conventional "construction management" method.
CSID's rationale was that DBFOM offered the best prospect of generating private sector funding for the sports campus as well as transferring most of the risks to the successful tenderer. But the notion that there would be a large pot of private money, flagged by CSID at £150 million (€190.4m), is little more than a fantasy.
Its illusions on this score were shattered by the outcome of its first venture into DBFOM for the aquatic centre. Though a private sector contribution ranging between £14.5 million (€18.4 million) and £29 million (€36.8 million) had been confidently anticipated, the amount actually offered was just £500,000, or 1 per cent of the cost.
Some of the difficulties inherent in DBFOM have been exposed by the fiasco surrounding the aquatic centre contract. After it became known to Paddy Teahon and Laura Magahy, CSID's director of executive services, that Waterworld UK was dormant, frantic efforts had to be made to secure financial guarantees for its operation.
Yet the €63 million aquatic centre is merely the first phase of a sports campus of mammoth proportions. Whatever CSID may say, HPR concluded that the Exchequer liability would amount to £704 million (€894m), not including payments to sporting bodies or the cost of relocating State laboratories from the Abbotstown site.
The latter is already under way. Last month the Department of Finance approved a contract for new laboratories for the Department of Agriculture and the State Laboratory at Backweston Farm, near Celbridge, Co Kildare, at an estimated cost of €179 million. Relocating the Marine Laboratory to Galway will cost a further €38 million.
CSID has also incurred significant expenditure in pursuit of the so-called Bertie Bowl, amounting to €18 million so far. Its contract with Magahy and Company for the provision of executive services is costing €127,000 a month, even though the project is effectively "on hold" pending a decision to proceed by the next government.
One of HPR's most damning conclusions was that the breadth and depth of skills available to the sports campus project should be reviewed "as it is our view that CSID's in-house team needs to be strengthened to create a well-rounded in-house management team with experience of projects of this size, complexity and challenge".
On Thursday, Séan Benton, the commissioner at the Office of Public Works in charge of State property, was appointed as chief executive of CSID. Ironically, Ms Magahy and her executive services team will now have to report to him; last February the OPW resigned as project manager because it was not prepared to report to her.
Irrespective of changes in personnel, HPR's crucial finding that CSID's current strategy would produce "a very small private investment" means there are still key questions that "need to be addressed primarily by Government, as they are in effect 100 per cent funding the project" - apart from the €63.5 million pledged by J.P. McManus.
These questions, all of which HPR said were "floating" in the absence of a proper business plan, are:
What is the end-product (ie range and specification of facilities)?
Who will use the facilities and on what basis?
What is the capital budget, costs and income?
What is the operational performance, including sinking fund?
What risks will Government accept both in the short and long term?
What level of funding, both capital and revenue, will Government make available?
What procurement strategy should be pursued?
How should the facility be managed and operated?
Other questions arise, such as whether Sports Campus Ireland, as originally conceived, is desirable at all. The main argument advanced for Abbotstown is that its 500-acre site, in State ownership, is sufficiently large to provide a "critical mass" for a range of facilities catering simultaneously for elite athletes and sports fans.
But what if all of the promised facilities do not materialise because of financial constraints? In that scenario, the case for Abbotstown simply collapses. Because if all of the promised facilities are not provided there, at an enormous cost to taxpayers, it would make more sense to look at more affordable, andmore realistic, alternatives.
Later this year, Dublin will acquire an 80,000-seat stadium when the GAA completes work on its spectacular redevelopment of Croke Park. And with moves afoot to lift the age-old ban on "foreign games", it has become possible to imagine Croke Park being opened up for rugby and soccer internationals.
Only two European capitals - Paris and Rome - have 80,000-seat stadiums. London used to have one until Wembley closed down, coincidentally in the wake of overblown redevelopment plans that came to nought. The notion that a city of Dublin's scale should have two 80,000-seat stadiums suggests we have lost the run of ourselves.