Angry FAI left out in the cold

LAST  NIGHT'S MEETINGS INVOLVING THE GOVERNMENT, FAI and GAA:  Ireland's continued involvement in the joint bid to host the 2008 European Championships was salvaged last night in Government Buildings where the GAA appear to have provided enough of a basis for the Taoiseach to inform Scottish First Minister Jack McConnell that the authorities here remain committed to the project.

In a statement issued by the Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation Dr Jim McDaid after the talks had concluded it was confirmed that discussions had taken place with the GAA last night and that the organisation had broadly indicated that Croke Park could be made available to stage games during the championship.

"The GAA is already co-operating in hosting in Croke Park the opening and closing ceremonies of the Special Olympics in 2003," read the statement. "The association has also, in its recently published strategic review, recommended that it should consider allowing the use of Croke Park by other codes, on an occasional basis."

The statement goes on to confirm that if the motions currently on the agenda for its annual congress in April relating to the opening up of Croke Park to other codes are passed that the association "will then be in a position to consider the request to accommodate some of the European Championship games."

The Tánaiste Mary Harney, the Minister for Finance Charlie McCreevy and sports minister Dr Jim McDaid represented the Government at last night's discussions and the outcome appears to represent a major victory for the Tánaiste, who had expressed a strong preference for Croke Park rather than the proposed Stadium Ireland being floated as one of Ireland's two venues for the European Championship bid.

Confirmation of the intention of Scotland and Ireland to bid jointly can now be forwarded to UEFA over the course of today, and the question of whether Stadium Ireland will be part of the final bid document has been buried until after the election when it will be the task of Fianna Fáil to resurrect their leader's pet project in the event that they are again involved in government.

Indeed, such an attempt to reintroduce the option of using Stadium Ireland as a venue is flagged in the last paragraph of last night's statement which reads: "Between now and May 31st, the date for submission of the joint bid, the Steering Group will be exploring a number of options as to how the stadium requirements can be met."

While last night's outcome represents an embarrassment for Fianna Fáil it represents a potential humiliation for the FAI, whose position was made all the more awkward last night by the fact that the association's president Milo Corcoran and treasurer John Delaney are due to go to Glasgow this morning to take part in the official launch of the bid and did not know for much of the evening whether or not they would be making the trip.

After last night's meetings the FAI's development officer John Byrne admited that the proposed use of Croke Park "would not have been our preference but we were in a position where the whole thing might have been blown out of the water. So we're relieved at least that the bid is proceeding for the moment and our aim is to get the Stadium Ireland element of it reinstated before the May 31st deadline".

The permanent abandonment of the scheme would represent an enormous blow to the FAI and the men who secured key positions within it in the wake of last year's deal with the Government to abandon plans for Eircom Park.

Brendan Menton, John Delaney and John Byrne led the move to abandon the Citywest scheme in favour of agreeing to move to Abbotstown and the three have respectively become general secretary, treasurer and development officer of the association.

The overall deal was estimated to be worth up to €110 million in additional funding to the organisation over 10 years but, in reality, just short of €70 million of that depended on Stadium Ireland being built. The Government had promised the FAI that it could sell all of the corporate boxes and premium seats for the first 10 years of the new stadium's operation.

The estimated take on this would be €50 million, of which the association was guaranteed €20 million in advance. That leaves a €30-million balance which, combined with the projected benefit of playing in a larger stadium, free of both rent and commercial contractual obligations - a figure put at up to €3.8 million per year - leaves the FAI facing a €68-million shortfall over 10 years on the benefits they trumpeted when the deal was done.

The prospect of facing into this shortfall effectively makes the idea of pressing ahead with the entire bid rather unattractive if Croke Park is to be settled upon as the second venue alongside Lansdowne Road. There is considerable concern within the FAI that it could be faced with having to play its home internationals at the IRFU's ground for the foreseeable future. All of which prompted several senior Merrion Square officials to suggest yesterday that the organisation would have to resort to legal action against the Government if the stadium was to be abandoned.

During the early part of yesterday, though, it was clear that their most immediate concern was the idea that they might have to tell their counterparts in Scotland as well as UEFA that they were no longer in a position to play any part in a joint bid. "We're not collapsing our bid here," said Byrne prior to the talks, "we're collapsing theirs. And we'll all be laughed out of court in UEFA. Neither ourselves nor the Scots will ever be able to get an underage mini-tournament out of them if this ends up falling apart like this."

By the end of the talks our mini-tournament prospects still remained bright enough. But the difficulties experienced by the Government in merely confirming Ireland's intention to remain involved are unlikely to have enhanced the chances of this joint effort ever winning the support it requires if it to stand a serious chance of actually being successful.