Reasonable to expect GAA to pay more for Casement Park – Gordon Lyons

It is reasonable that the GAA should be expected to pay more than its original pledged contribution towards the redevelopment of Casement Park, Communities Minister Gordon Lyons has said.

Mr Lyons said any decision that Stormont should increase its spend on the project would need to be made by the Executive and would have to be balanced against competing demands.

It follows reports that the cost of developing the Casement Park stadium has dropped to £270 million, after the design was modified when plans to host Euro 2028 games there were abandoned.

In September, the UK government ended hopes that the venue would host Euros games when it said it would not bridge a funding gap to deliver the redevelopment in time.

It said the risk to the public purse of missing the tournament deadline was too high.

The Government also expressed concerns about how the cost of the project had potentially risen to more than £400 million.

The Stormont Executive had committed to redevelop Casement Park in 2011, as part of a strategy to revamp football’s Windsor Park and the rugby ground at Ravenhill.

While the two other Belfast-based projects went ahead, the redevelopment of Casement was delayed because of legal challenges by local residents.

The Stormont Executive then committed £62.5 million to the Casement project.

The GAA has pledged to contribute £15 million.

The Irish Government has offered roughly £42 million and said this funding remains in place even without the stadium being built for the Euros.

The BBC has reported that the revised cost of developing the stadium is now £270 million, leaving a funding shortfall of about £150 million.

Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn told a Westminster committee on Tuesday that he was not in a