Kerry chairman Patrick O’Sullivan has welcomed the €300,000 in sports capital funding to assist the development of a centre of excellence but revealed further assistance will be sought in line with recent Government funding of Páirc Uí Chaoimh.

The former operator of the National Aquatic Centre is claiming over €30m losses and damages over being pursued by a state-owned company for years to pay €10m Vat under the centre’s lease.

The Chief Executive of the National Aquatic Centre says the Aquazone facility will remain closed until they are satisfied everything is in order at the pool.

HE WAS heralded as its “white knight” for giving crucial support to a flagging development agenda.

Taxpayers’ money will continue to be wasted because government departments are not taking the recommendations of the Public Accounts Committee as seriously as they should, its chairman warned.

The Aquatic Centre affair was marked by incompetence, writes Michael Clifford

A litany of government departments and State agencies are expected to be heavily criticised for wasting huge sums of public money in a report to be published by an Oireachtas committee today.

The cavalier attitude of government departments and highly paid advisers towards public projects that involve the money of beleaguered taxpayers is mind boggling.

The USA synchronised swimming squad hailed the National Aquatic Centre as a “world-class facility” they intend to use as their base for every European competition they participate in.

Gaelic, rugby, soccer and hockey chiefs have signed up to plans to develop the new National Sports Campus.

South Korea, Poland, Venezuela, Surinam & Cayman Islands have chosen Dublin as a training base for the London Olympics.

The “bizarre” inability of the Revenue Commissioners to understand complex tax laws was blamed for the Government becoming involved in a lengthy legal battle over the National Aquatic Centre.

One of the most bitter, personalised and expensive corporate fiascoes in Irish sport will be picked apart in an Oireachtas hearing today.

A JUDGE at the circuit court yesterday in Tralee said he had no doubt a mother of three had suffered psychological upset and trauma after she saw the arms of a man underneath the cubicle of a major leisure centre where she was showering naked.

GARDAÍ have begun an investigation into alleged irregularities around how Basketball Ireland spent €1.8 million in grants intended for the specific purpose of installing basketball hoops in local communities.

The National Aquatic Centre was planned in haste and will be repented as a financial drain for 20 years, writes Conor Ryan Investigative Correspondent

THE chairman of the Dáil Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Bernard Allen, has revealed the long-running legal action concerning the National Aquatic Centre is to be investigated.

THE Department of Sport has finally admitted defeat in a seven-year legal battle to claim €10.5 million worth of VAT from the former operators of the National Aquatic Centre.

THE former holding company for the National Aquatic Centre more than halved its losses last year.

TAXPAYERS have been landed with a multimillion euro legal bill after a state agency ignored the advice of the Attorney General and subsequently lost its Supreme Court case.

SPORTS Minister Martin Cullen, has reaffirmed his commitment to the completion of the National Sports Campus in Abbotstown.

Vital information about the consortium awarded the contract to build the €63m National Aquatic centre which would have resulted in its exclusion from the tendering process was withheld from the Taoiseach and members of the Government, the High Court heard today.

IF YOU came down this direction to get refuge from the John O’Donoghue furore towards the front of the paper, don’t take flight because you see his name printed here.

THE row over the running of the National Aquatic Centre has cost the state at least €1.2 million in legal fees to date.

THE troubled National Aquatic Centre, left, will cost taxpayers another €1.8 million this year, it emerged yesterday.

CONTROVERSY surrounding the operation of the National Aquatic Centre continued yesterday as the High Court ruled that possession of the building be returned to State company Campus and Stadium Ireland Development Ltd (CSID).

PADDY TEAHON, the former executive chairman of the State company that owns the €62 million National Aquatic Centre (NAC), has denied before the High Court that he was under extreme pressure from Taoiseach Bertie Ahern to have matters regarding the centre sorted so it would be open in time for the Special Olympics of summer 2003.

The National Swimming Championships begin in Lisburn today aiming to end a time of turmoil for the sport. Declan Colley reports.

AN agreement of April 30, 2003, appeared to contemplate all pool receipts from the €62 million National Aquatic Centre (NAC) were to be paid into an account in the sole name of Limerickman Pat Mulcair.

IT would be a travesty if violent protests against the G8 summit were to deflect the eyes of the world from vitally important campaigns aimed at ridding Africa of poverty and combating global warming.

The Health and Safety Authority (HSA) should urgently examine the National Aquatic Centre after a damning report found 126 cracks in pool walls, it was claimed today.

The Comptroller and Auditor General is reportedly planning to investigate recent controversies at the €62m National Aquatic Centre and the amount of money they have cost Irish taxpayers.

THE murky waters of Ireland’s leaking National Aquatic Centre get cloudier by the day.

IRISH comedians have done very well at the Edinburgh Fringe over the years.

TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern reluctantly rowed into the National Aquatic Centre fiasco yesterday when he expressed deep dissatisfaction with Dublin Waterworld, the company contracted to run the facility.

THE owners and operators of the National Aquatic Centre (NAC) are locked in a dispute over who should pay for repairing problems at the centre, which has been leaking millions of litres of water over the past few months.

BY any stretch of the imagination, the massive leakage of water from the €62 million National Aquatic Centre is a costly shambles.

The Labour Party has called on the Taoiseach and the Minister for Sport to publish an independent engineering report into the National Aquatic Centre in west Dublin.

The National Aquatic Centre - built two years ago at a cost of €62m to the Irish taxpayer - is reportedly leaking millions of litres of water through massive cracks in its floor.

THE Government is expected to approve the revised €100m blueprint for the controversial Sports Campus Ireland at Abbotstown in north-west Dublin later this month.

WHEN Bertie Ahern was introduced to the Master Blaster, he must have breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn’t an angry backbencher.

The Tanaiste has insisted that the Special Olympics will go ahead.

Labour Party leader, Ruairi Quinn, has called on the Taoiseach to reveal the details of his involvement in the awarding of a controversial licence that is a part of the national stadium project.