When Frank Dunlop was giving his explosive evidence to the Flood tribunal, what he had to say about his involvement in a plan for a national sports stadium in west Dublin was only a sideshow to the main event. But his evidence about that abortive plan is nevertheless instructive, for it provides a timely reminder that there's more to sports stadiums than sport.
Back in 1992 Owen O'Callaghan, developer of the now infamous Quarryvale complex, put forward an elaborate plan for a national sports stadium in Neilstown. Frank Dunlop was hired to promote the idea. Asked about it by the tribunal's counsel, Patrick Hanratty SC, he replied: "I don't want to be disingenuous, Mr Hanratty, but most people, while welcoming the project, would regard it as a subterfuge as regards the designation of the land . . . to close off the possibility that the Neilstown lands would ever be re-designated town centre." The stadium project, in other words, could have important knock-on benefits for the Quarryvale proposals.
Nothing came of Owen O'Callaghan's stadium plan and it has, of course, no connection with the Government's current project of building a huge national sports stadium in west Dublin. But the murky connections hinted at in Frank Dunlop's evidence provide a timely reminder that enthusiasm for sport should not overwhelm the kind of healthy scepticism and scrutiny that should accompany any major proposal to spend vast sums of public money.
Knowing what we now know about the nature of planning in Co Dublin, it is essential that the public be given far more information about the Government's stadium plans than was volunteered in the glitzy media blitz which trumpeted the development when it was announced a few months ago.
This is a huge public project whose direct and indirect costs to the public purse could amount to close to half a billion pounds. There is nothing to suggest that the plan, which has been driven by the Taoiseach himself, is motivated by anything other than a genuine desire to give Ireland a state-of-the-art sports facility. But certain aspects raise serious questions which should be answered now, before it becomes too late.
In the first place, it has emerged that the role of the wealthy tax exile, J.P. McManus, in the stadium development is at once much more enigmatic and much more extensive than it first appeared. Mr McManus, along with his longtime associate Dermot Desmond, was named by the Glackin Report as a beneficiary of the Telecom site affair. His involvement was wrapped in layers of careful concealment.
It has always seemed puzzling that a prestigious national project, intended to embody the new-found pride of the nation, should be so closely linked to a tax exile who, on Mr Glackin's findings, played a key part in such a disquieting national scandal.
J.P. McManus has refused to answer media questions about the reasons for his gift of £50 million towards the development of the stadium.
The text of the letter sent to the Department of the Taoiseach last January, which forms the basis for the agreement between Mr McManus and the Government, informs the Department that a Swiss bank, Pictet et Cie, is holding £50 million for the project. But, as Des Crowley pointed out in last month's Magill, the letter does not actually say that this money has been deposited by Mr McManus. Asked who the donor was, the bank refused to say, citing "Swiss banking confidentiality". That should be enough to encourage the most rigorous official scrutiny.
Even while J.P. McManus appears so modestly anonymous in the legal documents, his actual influence in the stadium project seems much greater than was at first apparent. The documents published in Magill make it clear that the chairman of the Government's committee to oversee the project was effectively chosen by Mr McManus. In a reply prepared for a possible question at last January's press conference about the appointment to the chair of the committee of Derek Keogh, former chief executive of Aer Rianta, Bertie Ahern was to have said: "Arising from conversations between J.P. McManus and myself, McManus asked Derek Keogh to undertake some exploratory work. In view of the experience he has gained, and in particular in the light of his background in the public service, he is ideally placed to be chairman of the steering committee."
There is a whole other area of concern. Strangely little attention has been paid to the actual site of the proposed national stadium, which must, according to the terms of the Government's agreement with Mr McManus, be the Abbotstown estate in west Dublin. The complex already contains a very important public asset, the eight State laboratories for chemical and scientific analysis.
These labs perform important public functions. The Fisheries Laboratory has recently completed a major extension at a cost of £1 million. Right now, a massive rebuilding programme is nearing completion at the State Laboratory, at a cost of about £3 million.
Yet, because of the stadium, all of these labs are to be demolished and relocated to Charlie McCreevy's Kildare constituency over the next two years. This will cost at least £100 million, a massive hidden cost of the stadium project. Yet none of the labs is actually on the part of the site earmarked for the stadium. Their wasteful demolition will in fact free up a very large site, served by new transport and other infrastructure, which has suddenly become prime development land. The Abbotstown estate is 490 acres. The stadium will take 230 acres. What is to happen to the rest of the land?
There should be a moratorium on the whole stadium project until the Dail Committee of Public Accounts has carried out a full, open and independent review. Until we're sure that the playing field is truly level, the National Stadium shouldn't get a single cheer.
fotoole@irish-times.ie