Waterford to continue with Walsh Park plans

Walsh Park, Waterford City. 

Waterford will be pushing on with phase one of Walsh Park’s redevelopment later this year despite Meath joining Kildare in pausing their stadium reconstructions.

On Monday, Meath chairman John Kavanagh told clubs that work on what they hope will be a 21,000 all-seater stadium was not possible at present due to rising costs. “ The redevelopment of Páirc Tailteann is at a standstill and will be for the foreseeable future, he said.
“Inflation in the construction sector, the shortage in the housing sector, the war in Ukraine which has impacted on energy, all this has had a knock on effect meaning that the cost of the Páirc Tailteann development has increased by anything between 40% and 50% from what was originally budgeted back in 2019.”
Earlier this month, Kildare said plans for St Conleth’s Park were also put on ice. However Waterford chairman Sean Michael O’Regan last night confirmed that Waterford will commence work on their stadium later this year.

He explained: “We’re still going ahead. We looked at it overall over a phased basis over a couple of years and phase one is still on track. All going well, we hope to start construction at the end of September. Our phase one really involves concrete more than anything majorly detailed like excavation so we’re probably looking in that sense.
“Material cost, material supply and delivery dates, obviously the marketplace for each of those is uncertain and there will be an impact, I’m sure, to our phase one but nothing major that will involve stopping.
“We’ve got huge support from Croke Park, Munster Council, the Government. We’re still coming to the end of the procurement process but everything still seems to be on track for later. Once we get started, it will be a huge lift to Waterford supporters.
“While phase one is taking place, we’ll be looking at beginning phase two in parallel and hopefully by that time the marketplace will be steadier. Phase two is our bigger expenditure cost but we’re not looking at that until the middle or the end of 2023.”

Waterford received €3.75m in a capital government grant for Walsh Park, Meath were awarded €6.2m and Kildare were allocated €5m towards a new 3,000-capacity stand and facilities upgrade.
Regan doesn’t envisage Waterford’s games programme at Walsh Park will be seriously impacted by the construction work.
“Phase one, we would be hoping, won’t affect matches. That could be six or seven months and a lot of that wouldn’t be interfering with the pitch. Once we get to phase two, I think we’ll sit around the table and the intention would be not to upset games being played in Walsh Park.
“A lot of the work in phase two involves the Keane’s Road end so the pitch should be okay by then. When you’re bringing in construction machinery, it could affect the pitch but by that time we would hope not.”
Meanwhile, Meath have appointed a three-person committee of chairman Kavanagh, Seán Kelly and Conor O’Donoghue to propose the next senior football manager after Andy McEntee stepped down last week. Nominations from clubs close next Monday.