Ahern and Harney at odds over stadium

JUST weeks before a Cabinet decision on the issue, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Tánaiste Mary Harney were last night once again at loggerheads over a National Stadium at Abbotstown.

Sports Minister John O’Donoghue, who will this month ask ministers to choose from a shortlist of stadium options, told the Dáil before Christmas that Abbotstown had always been, and remained, his preferred option.

The greenfield site, adjacent to the National Aquatic Centre, also remains Mr Ahern’s favoured option.

“We need a second stadium. I’d like it to be in Abbotstown but by and large I think we need a second stadium. I’m not hung up and never was about where,” he told RTÉ’s This Week programme yesterday.

“I think we would have got on with it except for the cost issue but it’s not going to go away. We need a second stadium,” he said.

However any notion of building a national stadium at Abbotstown was immediately scotched as Ms Harney indicated she remained resolutely opposed to the option.

“For me it is a question of the implications for the exchequer given other priorities, and there have always been other priorities, even in the very good days,” she told the Sunday Times.

Mr Ahern warned that the issue was one that had to be dealt with if Irish World Cup games were to be prevented from going to foreign facilities.

“It will be a sad day, even if I forecast this a long time ago, if Ireland has to play World Cup qualifying matches in Anfield or Old Trafford, much as I love Old Trafford. But we’re heading to do that if we don’t deal with this issue,” he said.

“It is difficult and there’s political difficulties but it’s an issue that we have to deal with.”

Fianna Fáil, in recent weeks, has been refloating the possibility of the Abbotstown facility and the Coalition’s programme for Government commits to a world-class stadium in the Government’s lifetime.

But with Ms Harney opposed to Abbotstown as a location for the national stadium, the reconstruction of Lansdowne Road will continue to be the most likely possibility.

“The infrastructure is in Lansdowne Road. It is on a train link, it’s close to the centre of the city,” Ms Harney said.

“Anyone that seems to have done any work in this area and that would know a lot more about it than I do, always say to me that centre-city locations are far more successful than out-of-town locations, which tend to be abandoned after matches.”