The Taoiseach has restated his commitment to the controversial National Sports Campus proposed for Abbotstown, Co Dublin, and has said he is determined it will go ahead.
In an address to representatives of sport from around the country at a Sports High Performance Conference in the Burlington Hotel, Dublin, he defended the Sports Campus Ireland project, which has been criticised for being too costly and misguided.
Mr Ahern said it would help complete the jigsaw of sport services in Ireland and would cost a fraction of what some of its critics claimed.
"I believe strongly, and I make no apology for it, that the investment we will make in the campus will repay itself many times over in terms of our national development.
"We are at a unique time when this much-needed investment is also an affordable one, and I am determined that it will go ahead."
Describing many of the facilities proposed for the Abbots town campus, he said: "Sport needs the capacity to organise and administer; the access to medicine and research; the opportunity to share facilities - like libraries, training areas, conference rooms, for example - and the chance to ensure that high-level training and good competition are available all year round".
He said the Government was eager to ensure taxpayers got full value for money and were "fully reassured on that score by an authoritative independent voice".
He asked the consultants to take into consideration the fact that Ireland's "many great sportsmen and women" had achieved so many of their outstanding performances abroad and never competed at a top level in front of an Irish crowd.
Mr Ahern said he hoped that in our modern prosperity we would ensure the facilities were provided to allow the "superstars of the future" the chance "to be cheered on to the echo of a packed house of Irish sports fans".
The Sports Campus Ireland project, featuring an 80,000-seat stadium, a 50-metre pool and a velodrome, has been criticised by Opposition parties, who argue that the £1 billion they believe it will cost should be spent on health and education.
The Government has estimated that the project will cost £550 million, £350 million of which will be borne by the Exchequer, the rest by private backers.