Revealed: Páirc redevelopment costs soar towards €110m as Croke Park steps in

Croke Park stadium director Peter McKenna says the cost of redeveloping Páirc Uí Chaoimh has escalated to an eye-watering total of €110 million, almost €25m higher than the €86 million total estimated following the completion of works last year.

McKenna was speaking in the wake of revelations that Croke Park will now run the new Cork stadium, and he accepted that solving Cork’s GAA financial issues is a ‘10 to 15-year set-up’.

“It became clear in the middle of the year that the amount spent on the stadium way exceeded what people thought,” McKenna confirmed to the Irish Examiner yesterday.

“We’re probably close to €110m as a final cost, and what was the ability to pay that?

“As an Association we needed to take a far closer look at exactly what the position was - not so much ‘why is this happening’ as ‘where are we, and what can we do to stem the problem?’ That was the genesis of it.

“In order to stem the debt or put a shape to it, we needed an experienced management team involved.

“I think if it wasn’t an aligned set-up, you’d be talking about a receivership or something like that.

The ability to pay that amount of money back wasn’t there, but that’s not how we operate as an organisation.

Where did the overrun come from?

McKenna described that as “a difficult question to answer”.

“Building projects are notorious for overruns but projects can be brought in on time and on budget. It’s about having good people and good controls.

“Costs certainly escalated, and that’s problem A.

“But the building is there, it looks well, people’s experience of it is positive. It would have been far worse if the work had stopped halfway through and we’d have been left without one thing or another. It’s been finished to a very high standard but the cost is way in excess of what was expected,” he said.

“That’s the building side. The other side is running it as a business, which is a specialty.

“Stadia as we know them now weren’t there 20 years ago, back then they were just fields with a roof over the seats.

“Croke Park was probably the first in the world to go beyond that and we have a very good team who work in that space.

“We’d be mad not to use their experience with hospitality, bars, all of that (in Cork).”

McKenna pointed out that staff in Croke Park had to learn on the job when it came to stadium management.

“The best example I can give is Croke Park, which is regarded - rightly - by GAA people as theirs. We report every year to the Congress on how it’s run, questions can be asked - we field questions on where the beef comes from, the use of the stadium is governed by Central Council and so on.

“It’s a positive set-up and we pay a dividend every year - but it wasn’t always like that. The first year of operations Croke Park lost €2m, the bars lost €800,000 - it was a basket case, so we’re not painting ourselves as angels here. We learned our trade the hard way.

What Cork County Board - and Cork GAA people - need is the stadium, which is there to be used, and they don’t need the concern of feeling it’ll be an anchor on top of them.

“What we’re looking to put in place is a system which ensures it’s not an anchor where the stadium can be used and that it’ll be seamless.

“We’re like the guys in the theatre who put up the sets and draw the curtains, but we’re not the actors.

“How the hurlers and footballers perform, that’s what’s important and that’s what will lift Cork.”

In terms of Croke Park’s role on Leeside, those from GAA HQ take a hands-on role, he added.

“We said we’d look at this in a collegiate way and we felt we needed to put some support behind the loan and to put a management team in place to take hold of the asset - very much like Croke Park.

“It stays strongly as a GAA base. I’ve seconded Tom Grealis to go down there (as temporary manager) but that’s short-term and we’ve had people down in Páirc Ui Chaoimh from Croke Park, people who have experience in different areas, for a couple of days a week at a time.

“We have a fair handle on the accounts now, we have a budget together for next year and a strategic plan together for the next three years.”

The Croke Park stadium director stressed the bright side but acknowledged it would not be a quick fix: “There are a lot of positives there. We’re looking at premium tickets, the hospitality business, and there’s huge potential there.

“We need to bring the synergies from Croke Park to bear here, but this is a 10- to 15-year set-up. It’s not going to be solved in a hurry.

“At least (a decade). The debt is not €110m remember, that’s the final cost right now - early on in the process €70m or €75m was mooted as a cost - but this is not a three-year project.”