Casement Park - 'out of time'

The dereliction that is Casement Park

Yesterday afternoon I was in West Belfast to speak to the boys in the politics class at the Christian Brothers School on the Glen Road. On the way there I took a wrong turn and ended up on the Andersonstown Road. As I drove past Casement Park, workmen were erecting a new hoarding along the outside wall of the park. It looked well and it screened off the park from passers-by but the site is still derelict and the GAA have still not produced a new design to take to the planners.

In spite of what Caral Ni Chuilin has said, it certainly won't be built 'under her watch' and it won't even get started 'under her watch'.

The derelict site must be a constant reminder of a project gone badly wrong and it may be that someone is hoping, especially with an election looming in the near future, that 'out of sight' will mean 'out of mind'. I'm not sure that will be the case.

I suspect more people will simply thin kof the phrase 'out of sight' and say 'out of time'. Ravenhill has been completed, Windsor Park is almost completed and Casement hasn't even started.