Reply To: The Bertie bowl revisited

Interesting comments from Noel Smyth, the chairman of Dunlow Ewart:

http://www.onbusiness.ie/2002/0916/stadium.html

He seems to be interested in building the stadium along with some other things under the right circumstances. I think the key to getting the private sector involved is the actual site at Abbotstown itself, it must be very valuable land so if a private consortium can get it say at a favourable price they could build the stadium along with high-density housing, an indoor arena etc and make money.

Actually, the more I think about it the better it sounds (in theory) – the country could potentially get a stadium, an arena and some other things as well as a lot of new high-density housing which can only be a good thing for hard-pressed house-hunters (provided its done right). I have a bad feeling though that the PDs will object to offloading the site for less than its worth, even though the potential gain to the country is fairly great. Anyway, I refuse to get excited about this because something always gets in the way of these things and ruins it.