The proposed redevelopment of Belfast's Casement Park, included as part of the UK and Republic of Ireland's Euro 2028 bid, has faced a number of challenges over the last decade.
Belfast's Casement Park may appear an unlikely choice as one of the 10 venues which form part of the UK and Republic of Ireland's joint bid to host the Euro 2028 finals.
With the UK and Ireland now the sole remaining bid for the Euro 2028 finals, BBC Sport examines some of the challenges that have surrounded the rebuilding of Casement Park.The National Football Stadium at Windsor Park in south Belfast, home of the Northern Ireland football team and Linfield FC, the most successful team in the history of Irish League football, is located just two miles from Casement Park.
The GAA said it was aiming to work within the original budget of £77m, with the aim of being open by 2019 in time for the following year's Ulster Senior Football Championship.
The stadium construction was put on hold because of the absence of ministers at Stormont, where devolution had been suspended since February 2022, and there was no agreement on funding for the project. A month later, in an interview with BBC News NI, Northern Ireland Secretary of State Chris Heaton-Harris indicated the government is prepared to consider making a financial contribution to the project, if the Euros bid is successful.Protracted legal arguments and the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020 led to further delays to the proposed stadium rebuild and by the time plans were given formal approval in the middle of 2021, the cost of the scheme had rocketed.
Controversy around the Casement reconstruction and tensions in the power-sharing executive were heightened when Deirdre Hargey, at that time Communities Minister, pledged in February 2022 that work on the redevelopment of Casement would continue while announcing that a£36m funding package to upgrade and redevelop regional soccer stadia in Northern Ireland could not progress without executive sign-off.
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