In 2012, stadium designers were appointed to the project and it was expected the new Casement Park would be built by 2015. But it didn’t turn out that way.
The first big obstacle came in 2014, when the High Court overturned planning permission for the project.
Local residents, led by the Mooreland and Owenvarragh Residents Association (MORA), had lodged a legal challenge over objections to the stadium’s size – they said it would block out light from local homes and cause serious traffic disruption.
Then, in 2015, came possibly the most contentious year of the Casement Park project.
Firstly, it emerged that a Safety Technical Group (STG) formed to oversee safety issues around the new stadium had not approved the design plans due to concerns over how long it would take people to leave the ground in an emergency.
Later, one of the STG members, safety expert Paul Scott, told a Northern Ireland Assembly committee that he had been put “under pressure” to approve the plans by government officials.
He also complained of bullying- he later settled an industrial tribunal case with Sport NI.
With the original Casement plan now scrapped, the GAA went to work on plans for a new stadium, revising the capacity down to about 34,500.
Leave a Reply