In abandoning the Bertie Bowl, we have squandered a great opportunity

A POLL conducted for a Sunday newspaper last week found, not surprisingly, that four out of five people believe the Government misled the electorate about the state of the public finances before the general election.

"The people were cheated," is the new mantra of the opposition. But politicians of all party affiliations have massaged the figures, been economical with the truth and broken campaign promises and manifesto pledges for as long as anybody can care to remember.

Looking back upon the election in May, the real scandal for our democracy is not that our politicians promised us too much, but how utterly pointless the whole affair was.

Entirely forgettable as the campaign was, some of you may still recall it was dominated by a tedious debate over macro-economic figures as the parties feuded over the costings of the various elections manifestos, and whether the figures added up. At one point, the main parties even came up with the ingenious idea of submitting their respective manifestos to an assessment by a panel of independent economists.

I argued at the time that the so-called economic debate taking place in the election campaign was not politics at all, it was accountancy the electorate were offered no alternative in terms of broad economic strategy, merely the choice of a little more or less spending or taxation here or there and that the figures being squabbled over were so arbitrary in any case that the "debate" was largely meaningless. And so it has proved.

The sterile economic argument was conducted upon such narrow terms that within a few months, changed economic circumstances have already rendered it completely irrelevant. The election campaign may as well not have happened. And then politicians wonder why there is so much apathy and declining voter turnouts.

The one issue that did arouse a modicum of passion a few months, changed economic circumstances have already rendered it completely irrelevant. The election campaign may as well not have happened. And then politicians wonder why there is so much apathy and declining voter turnouts.

The one issue that did arouse a modicum of passion was the so-called Bertie Bowl. Many seem to have derived satisfaction from seeing the Taoiseach finally getting his comeuppance last week and being humiliatingly forced to abandon his vainglorious pet project.

Personally, however, his commitment to this exciting and ambitious project was one of the few things I have ever found to really admire about Bertie Ahern or his Government. In the present social and intellectual climate of low ambitions and horizons, where anything grander than a new school or hospital wing is automatically liable to be viewed with suspicion, his willingness to think big in at least one public policy sphere was refreshing.

The small-minded whingers who attacked the Campus and Stadium Ireland project as an extravagant folly can rejoice in their victory, but it is a shame for the country that we have squandered a great opportunity to finally put in place a national sporting facility on a par with the very best in the world. Instead, we must continue to make do with what Olympic Council of Ireland president Pat Hickey described recently as Third World sporting facilities that leave him "eternally ashamed" as he tries to explain Ireland's inability to host international sporting events.

"In fact," Hickey observed, "several Third World countries are doing a better job in providing modern indoor and outdoor sports facilities than we are."

He also expressed his embarrassment at seeing Slovenia host the European Youth Olympic Games when we would not even make a bid for it because of lack of facilities: "I would dearly love if we could host the youth games but we can't and here is a country with just two million people and just out of a Soviet system and they are light years ahead of us in terms of sports facilities."

The indignity on Monday of having to parade a UEFA inspection team around one ramshackle rugby stadium where soccer should never be played and one superb GAA stadium where soccer is not permitted to be played is just the immediate price we must pay for our poverty of ambition and unwillingness to raise our aspirations.

In the end, it was the sharp deterioration in public finances that led to the abandonment of the National Stadium plans. After a spate of Government cutbacks and "adjustments" in crucial areas like health and education, the PDs were finally able to convince Bertie Ahern that the project that was to be his crowning glory was simply no longer feasible.

But for all the alarmist talk of a budgetary crisis and out of control expenditure, our Government spends less as a proportion of GDP than almost any other country in the EU. We would have to reverse only a tiny proportion of the large-scale reduction in current Government spending as a proportion of GNP that has taken place over the past five years in order to deliver the National Stadium.

It is a slavish devotion to the contemporary economic dogma of prudence and stability that is holding the Government back, not a lack of resources. Moreover, the "think of how many new hospital facilities that could pay for" argument fails to take account of the potential economic benefits of a major infrastructural project like the Bertie Bowl. In the short term, it could provide a stimulus to the economy and create extra jobs, an important consideration as we head into a downturn, while it would have continued to boost local jobs and businesses in its immediate environs in the longer term.

The capacity to host major international sporting events in the future, such as the 2008 European Championships, would not only have brought additional economic benefits by attracting thousands of visitors but also boosted national morale and provided a wonderful spectacle for a sports-mad populace.

THE most revealing aspect of the whole Abbotstown affair is the extent of the hostility that already existed towards the project even back in the boom times , when the Government was running huge budget surpluses. The economic circumstances would probably never again be more conducive to the undertaking of such a project, yet straight away it was dismissed as a white elephant, a vanity project or a wasteful monument to one man's monstrous ego.

Ultimately, it was not the state of the public finances that killed off the Campus and Stadium Ireland concept but what you might call Millennium Dome syndrome modern society's aversion to risk-taking and to large-scale, ambitious and expensive projects.

This mood of lowered aspiration is by no means confined to Ireland. London's Millennium Dome ultimately proved a disaster because it was a reflection of New Labour itself a grand and imposing edifice but with nothing of substance contained within it.

But before it ever even had the chance to get off the ground, the project was bogged down by the whinging of critics who claimed it was too ambitious, too costly and drew resources away from schools and hospitals.

In Italy, the present government has sanctioned two exciting and ambitious infrastructural projects the construction of a suspension bridge linking Sicily to the mainland and the building of giant barriers to protect Venice from flooding yet both are mired in controversy over financial costs, environmental objections and the new "potential terrorist target" trump card so familiar to us here from anti-Sellafield campaigners.

With the demise of the Bertie Bowl and Greenpeace claiming a moral victory in their silly campaign to halt shipments of nuclear materials in the Irish Sea, it has been a bad week for reason and progress.