Ahern seeks to heal stadium rift with Harney

TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern and Tánaiste Mary Harney will today begin efforts to find a compromise on the planned National Stadium as time begins to run out for the joint Irish-Scottish bid for the 2008 European soccer championships.

Hopes of a clear decision on the issue at a Cabinet meeting today vanished last night as fresh evidence of a continuing rift between Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats within the coalition government emerged.

Compromise talks will centre on a decision to use the government-owned site at Abbotstown, near Dublin, for a scaled-down

development and greater involvement of private investors to ease the burden on the taxpayer.

Amid recent talk of public spending cutbacks, the PDs suggested the investment of millions of euro in a new stadium would be ill-advised. But as inspections by football

authority UEFA are due next weekend, their communications director Mike Lee said they would expect clarity on exactly which stadia are planned to be used.

The proposed National Stadium is central to Ireland’s commitment of providing two of the eight venues as there are problems with two other mooted venues. Mr Ahern is committed to building at Abbotstown but Ms Harney has questioned the wisdom of this, suggesting difficulties could be overcome with Croke Park and Lansdowne Road.

But she also hinted at compromise. “In the past the Taoiseach and I have worked very well together and we have resolved differences in the spirit of co-operation and partnership,” she said.

Mr Ahern also sought to play down difficulties, saying the Government would have to work through the issue over the next few days. A report into the building of a new stadium is due to come before Cabinet today and last night contacts between Mr Ahern, Ms Harney and Sports Minister John O’Donoghue were continuing.

Defending his stance, Mr Ahern said the stadium was a long-term project and that Croke Park would not have been built 100 years ago without some vision of the future. Estimates for a 65,000-capacity stadium vary from 300m euro to 500m euro.

But Labour Party TD Pat Rabbitte said the PDs’ credibility was ruined if the Government proceeded with the stadium plans. Mr Rabbitte said Justice Minister Michael

McDowell would have to explain why they approved the stadium now, after describing it as a wasteful, grandiose folly, before the general election.