The provision of a Sports Campus for the people of Ireland has galled and vexed the Opposition all week long. Having been whipped into opposing the provision of an 80,000-capacity stadium, a 50-metre pool, an indoor arena, headquarters and meeting rooms for the national governing bodies of sport, a sports science and medical centre, a velodrome and many other facilities, the main opposition parties have advanced a series of strange and illiberal arguments.
That the parties which formed the Rainbow government today argue that the provision of a national sports campus should be abandoned and the monies channelled into areas such as health shows a Pauline conversion to the undoubted needs of our health service.
Health expenditure has been doubled since the time of the Rainbow government and many of the problems of our health services today relate to areas such as medical manpower and the necessary run-in times for new health projects. Money is not the problem it was when that government controlled the fate of our health services.
Health is not losing out to the sports campus. The Government will spend at least 75 times more on health over the period of the National Development Plan than it will on Campus Stadium Ireland over the same period.
The argument is the same as was used against Teilifis na Gaeilge, the restoration of Government Buildings or Knock Airport. It lacks vision. Why spend money on the arts? Why spend money on our Irish language when it could be used elsewhere? It is a dismissive and myopic argument.
The other argument, the spectre of a billion pound white elephant, is also erroneous. The estimate from a comprehensive consultancy report puts the cost of the campus at £550 million, £200 million of which is to come from the private sector.
This leaves a total cost of £350 million to the taxpayer - far less than the projected and predicted billion. The cost estimates of the various bidders for the project should give us further confirmation of the sub-billion price tag, as will the new project review recently announced. If this review throws up worthwhile, cheaper methods of providing the population with Sports Campus Ireland, so be it. Nobody has a problem with spending less.
The Fine Gael position on Sports Campus Ireland is of most interest. In a good article in this newspaper on May 20th, 1995, the Deputy Leader of Fine Gael, Jim Mitchell, was quoted as saying he wanted lottery monies aimed at projects such as "a national sports stadium". Later on, Gay Mitchell (who had the foresight) asked the accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers to compile a report on the challenges facing Dublin should it decide to make a bid for the Olympic Games. The report stated that a stadium capable of holding 70,000 to 100,000 spectators was a high priority. There was no opposition from Fine Gael.
Indeed, the Fine Gael leader's major address to his party's ardfheis in Ballsbridge in March contained no reference whatsoever to sport. Next Tuesday and Wednesday, the annual conference of the Party of European Socialists will be held in Berlin. There will be much talk of vision and social progress.
The Irish Labour Party is sending a delegation and it too will talk of vision and social progress. Here in Ireland, however, it will stand fast against a sports campus which will benefit our athletes and sports fans for generations.
Opposition deputies all week were whipped vigorously into opposing this stadium. I know how they feel: in the past I too have been prodded through the lobby. However, an affordable, permanent structure, to be used for generations to come, dedicated to sport and leisure is hardly a folly, as they claim.
There should be no problem with using a small proportion of total State spending on projects such as Sports Campus Ireland, which will give expression to our culture, spirit and imagination. Sport has always been an essential part of our culture and the proposed sports campus will give expression to Irish sporting excellence for decades.
Just as we are placing a percentage of GNP into a pensions and social welfare fund to cater for the needs of tomorrow, investment in Sports Campus Ireland, along with much-needed investment in sports at local level, will cater for the sporting needs of this country for years to come.
Herein perhaps lies the real problem behind the political opposition to the campus. Maybe the real problem with the sports campus project is not the money but the fact that a Fianna Fail-led Government is proposing it.
This very notion of a visionary Fianna Fail policy seems to exasperate those who would portray Fianna Fail as a simple, malevolent and unsophisticated force in the political landscape. To accept a Fianna Fail with vision is to reject the simplistic view of the parties too often proffered today. It is to accept that Irish politics does not form a simple moral dichotomy - that Fianna Fail is not all bad - that the rest are not all good.
