The Taoiseach has said he is “not ruling ... out or in” the prospect of additional Government funding for Casement Park.
Speaking to reporters in Derry on Monday, Simon Harris said the Government was “open” to continuing conversations around the redevelopment of the west Belfast stadium and stood “ready to assist in any practical way we can”.
On Friday evening, Northern Secretary Hilary Benn announced the UK government would not fund the long-stalled rebuilding of Casement Park so that it could host matches in the Euro 2028 football tournament due to a “significant risk that it would not be built in time.”
Mr Harris said on Sunday that announcement “has been met with understandable disappointment”.
The Irish Government, under the Shared Island initiative, and the GAA had said they would contribute to the redevelopment, but delays and spiralling costs created a funding gap. Mr Benn said on Friday the cost of building Casement Park had risen “dramatically” from when the tournament bid was awarded in October 2023 and now – from £180 million to £400 million.
The Taoiseach is due to meet the GAA later this week. Mr Harris said he stood by the Irish Government’s commitment of €50 million and “what we now need to see is “what the British government and the Northern Ireland Executive want to do next.
“I spoke to the president of the GAA yesterday, I’m hoping to meet the GAA in the coming days, I’ll stay in contact with the First and Deputy First Minister and with prime minister Starmer, but let’s now try and get a bit of forward momentum going on this once and for all.
“What I’ve heard from everybody across the weekend is Casement is going to happen, Casement has to happen. The question is timelines and the question is, on what scale?”
Mr Harris acknowledged the “real sense of disappointment” felt by many at the UK government’s decision, but said the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, had “inherited” the situation from the previous government and had given it “serious consideration.”
“We have to, from this moment on, look forward in relation to the project,” the Taoiseach said.
The North’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill called for a “Plan B” from the UK government, saying London had “wrapped [the funding] up as part of the Euros bid” and this had caused additional delays.
“What we now need to see from the British government is, what is the Plan B? What is the contribution towards building Casement Park?
“That is work that is going to have to continue because we have to get on now and get Casement Park built,” she said.
Ms O’Neill also criticised the timing of it and other announcements on Friday evening, describing it as “absolutely shambolic”.
“To bury bad news on a Friday evening, to hope that perhaps people wouldn’t notice – not good enough, not acceptable and not the way to do business,” she told reporters on Monday.
The Minister for Communities, the DUP’s Gordon Lyons, told the Assembly the decision had been emailed to him at 6.32pm, approximately 40 minutes before the announcement was made public.
“I think it was inappropriate what has taken place with the government, to put it mildly, over the last week in terms of announcements that are made,” Mr Lyons said.
“I think it is right and proper that ministers are able to answer questions on this and that they are able to speak to the media, and neither of these things happened.”
On Monday, Mr Harris undertook a number of engagements in Derry on what was his first visit to the city as Taoiseach.
He met the mayor of Derry, Lilian Seenoi-Barr, at the Guildhall and visited the PSNI’s Strand Road police station before delivering the John Hume and Thomas P O’Neill Chair in Peace Lecture at the Ulster University’s Derry campus.
In a trip focused on North-South links, he announced a branding collaboration between the Wild Atlantic Way and the Causeway Coastal Route, which runs along the Derry and Antrim coast, and visited the site of a new teaching and student services building under development as a result of the Government’s Shared Island funding.
In his speech, he praised the contribution made by John and Pat Hume to peace as well as the “new era” in British-Irish relations.
He told reporters he felt “very confident ... that I have a willing interlocutor in Downing Street in terms of making progress on peace and prosperity across these islands.
“I can genuinely say that the reset is real, the reset is warm, the reset isn’t a slogan, because we’ve outlined the body of work that will now take place between now and next March’s joint summit between the two governments.
“I actually believe we could be at the dawn of the best relationship we’ve seen between an Irish and a British government in very, very many years, and that excites me, it energises me, and I won’t allow any one individual decision to disrupt that reality,” he said.
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