Páirc Uí Chaoimh costs: Public projects need oversight

There is good news and bad this week about the revamp at Páirc Uí Chaoimh.

The good news is that the bill for redeveloping Croke Park will not, as reported to this newspaper in December, be an eye-watering €110m.

That would have busted the budget by almost €25m.

The better news is that the total cost will be — at the last and, we hope, accurate count — a slightly less eye-watering €95.8m, which comes in overbudget by almost €10m.

Looked at in a sort of spin-doctorish way, that’s a saving — albeit a quite useless, theoretical one — in excess budget costs of €15m.

Where is the public interest in this, apart from the amenity and entertainment the park offers spectators, or will do when the pitch has been replaced at a cost of €1.5m?

It is in a fact that appears nowhere in the statement issued this week by the boards of the stadium and Cork County.

The Government (also known as the taxpayer) chipped in €30m towards the stadium’s redevelopment costs, which gives the public 30m reasons to be interested in and angered by what appears to be a slapdash approach to the handling of other people’s money.

There is, clearly, a public expenditure problem here that requires public scrutiny and, just as we have seen in the response to the National Children’s Hospital cost overruns, legitimate demands for accountability.

The stadium’s website says legends are born there.

That’s right, but inconvenient facts are buried there, too.