RUGBY COLUMN: So, as election time nears, the PDs, in their customary, po-faced manner, have again adopted the high moral ground concerning the proposed National Stadium at Abbotstown. It's a wonder they're not suffering from vertigo.

Meantime, the GAA bask in the reflected glory of their much-vaunted and much-wanted Croke Park; its magnificence is due in no small measure to the £80 million or so which we, the taxpayers, contributed to its refurbishment.

As they ponder whether they should deign to let other sports and their supporters into its hallowed environs, we are told that the £80 million which the taxpayers contributed merely brought forward Croke Park's reconstruction, that it would have been completed by 2010 or so anyway. There's gratitude for ye.

The Tánaiste and the GAA writers are happy to tell the IRFU and the FAI that a refurbished Lansdowne Road, with a reduced capacity of around the 35,000 mark at best, can accommodate most of their games while those which command bigger crowds can be held in Croke Park. But this blithely overlooks a number of critical factors.

First and foremost, the IRFU and the FAI are pursuing the goal of providing a "home" for their sports, as they are duty bound to do. In this regard, both the union and the FAI have bent over backwards to accommodate the Government's proposals for Sports Campus Ireland; the IRFU has held off on their options, such as building a new home in their Newlands site or redeveloping Lansdowne Road, while the FAI scrapped plans for building Eircom Park.

But the Government has reneged on promises made to both bodies, leaving the FAI especially high and dry.

It's symptomatic of the ill-informed comment out there that the IRFU were just expected to spend all their reserves and more for the benefit of the FAI's Euro 2008 bid, and then leave themselves with an even further reduced capacity for their games. It's also more than a little rich of GAA commentators to suggest the IRFU should stop sitting on their cash reserves and spend it on the redevelopment of Lansdowne Road. Of course, if given a few hand-outs adding up to £80 million of taxpayers' money, then they might well do so.

However, this also overlooks the extensive and expensive planning application process which the IRFU would have to go through, given the inevitable objections from local residents.

Similar objections would come from the local residents were there an expanded sporting itinerary in Croke Park. There's also the absence of floodlights in Croke Park, which isn't even a subject for planning application yet, which would severely limit its suitability for other sports.

The notion of Croke Park ever becoming available to rugby and football also presupposes that the GAA will abolish Rule 42, a helluva supposition. What kind of rent would the IRFU and the FAI be expected to pay?

That the PDs, whose constituency would presumably incorporate a good chunk of rugby-going types, should set back the Abbotstown project will please a good many rugby supporters who have traditionally attended Lansdowne Road. But it's all well and good for those who are smugly assured of tickets to cherish the notion of Irish matches being played in Dublin 4 for ever more.

Even in its existing decrepit state, Lansdowne Road's 48,000 capacity is ill-equipped to meet the demand for home internationals and thus ensure the game reaches its widest live audience. Saturday's visit of the Scots, even in the aftermath of the heavy defeat to England, would easily have generated a crowd of 60,000-plus if such a ground existed.

This season Lansdowne will ultimately have staged six international rugby matches, of which at least four would command attendances way in excess of 35,000. Coupled with at least four, perhaps even half a dozen, high-profile football matches, would Croke Park - without floodlights - really be able to accommodate all these games as well as the major hurling and Gaelic football games it stages? Not a hope.

There are limits to how much one pitch can take, and besides which there would inevitably be clashes for the use of Croke Park. Increasingly, rugby and football overlap with summer sports, all the more so as both rugby and football - having international dimensions - harbour designs on co-hosting major championships.

Euro 2008 is a case in point, when the finals would be held in the middle of the summer. Are the GAA just going to conveniently move out while that's going on? Likewise, the IRFU have twice co-hosted the World Cup and are bidding to do so again in 2007, by which stage it is quite likely that Rugby World Cup will have decided to move all World Cups to a summer slot (or worse still, September, bearing in mind the All-Ireland finals) to ensure continuity and a degree of harmony between the seasons in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Are both rugby and football just to forget about doing this for ever more?

Nor is Croke Park designed for rugby and football matches. Such is its size that holding those sports there would be akin to having them surrounded by a running track, greatly diluting the atmosphere.

It's also decidedly opportunistic for politicians to do leaflet drops in their constituency equating expenditure on a National Stadium with hospital waiting lists. Why is it that only sport is used as a political football when it comes to hospital waiting lists? Why not expenditure on, say, refurbished Government buildings? Sorry, maybe I missed something, but did the current Government actually end hospital waiting lists then when the Celtic Tiger still had its fangs? And if not, a Fine Gael-led government will do so? Yeah, sure.

What of the incalculable benefits which Sports Campus Ireland would bring? Even the damning High Point Rendel report estimates the windfall due from tourism, tax and job creation to be £239 million, leaving aside the "intangible benefits" in a sporting context. Likewise, the benefits in crime prevention and health, wherein sport remains one of the best preventative medicines.

The best option by far for both rugby and football remains the proposed stadium in Abbotstown, with a less ambitious, all-seater target of about 60,000. Irish sport deserves a national stadium and a centre of sporting excellence; we remain pretty much the only country in western Europe without one. Until a government helps to deliver one, they will have failed Irish sport however much they opportunistically climb on the back of Irish sporting achievements.