GAA president Sean McCague has expressed confidence that the Croke Park development will be able to cover its maintenance costs. He was speaking to The Irish Times about this week's appointment of a new committee to oversee the commercial exploitation of the stadium.

"My hope is that that will be the case. The committee hasn't met yet, but there are people there who have been selected for very particular skills they have to offer and have a track record of achievement. We will have our first meeting within the next fortnight, and initially will meet quite regularly because there are two further appointments to be made."

Those appointments are financial controller and stadium manager. Although the positions have been advertised, the jobs market is so buoyant that they haven't yet been filled, and one of them may be have to be advertised again.

Since their completion over five years ago, facilities in the New Stand have enjoyed some commercial success, even though there has been no management infrastructure. "It has been reasonably successful, but you have to remember that there has been no management team in place," says McCague. "Dermot Power (marketing manager of the redevelopment) and a few others have been keeping the business up and running and quite a bit of use is being made of the facilities. But the income is nothing compared to what you'd have with proper management structures running the facility - like a hotel might be run. "It was obvious with two sides of the redevelopment completed that we couldn't just have it sitting there, waiting for completion before appointing a manager. We have to open it piecemeal as it becomes available."

McCague says that the announcement of the committee just a week after the FAI's lucrative deal with the Government is "just a coincidence", as the formation had been decided on and publicised some time ago. He also refuses to be drawn into the question of what additional funding the GAA may seek in the light of the FAI's good fortune.

"If I started to argue with you over the car-phone about what we should get, I don't think I'd be advancing the GAA's case very much. In relation to other sports and what they get, good luck to them. At this stage I'm confident that we will receive further funding, but we have made no submissions on the matter to the Government."

He defends the redevelopment project against charges of having drastically exceeded its budget. With the Hogan Stand side due for completion in a year, the bulk of the expenditure is completed.

"It's frequently stated that the redevelopment has overrun, but there isn't really a colossal overrun on the original figures. The figure of £40 million is bandied about, but that includes costings for the Hill 16 and Nally Stand redevelopment which weren't included in the original figures, purchase of additional property and adjustments to the Canal End. The actual overrun is more like £13 million. Based on the original costings, that's an increase of only 11 per cent over the 1991-2001 period."

Finally, McCague declined to be drawn on the question of Croke Park's availability for use by other sports should Rule 42 be repealed at next month's congress - and the likelihood that the boat had been missed with the growing momentum of the Government's Stadium Ireland project.

"I couldn't answer that without pre-empting a decision of congress, and as I have to chair the debate it would be doubly inappropriate."

Stadium Executive Committee: Paddy Wright (formerly chief operations manager Smurfit's and currently chairman of the RTE Authority); Hugh Cawley (former general manager AIB); David Mackey (former county manager, Cavan CC, and director of the Quinn group); Peter Quinn (financial consultant, former GAA president and chairman of the Strategic Review Committee); Sean McCague (president of the GAA), Liam Mulvihill (director general of the GAA).

In yesterday's IT the committee published inadvertently omitted Peter Quinn.