Northern Secretary Hiliary Benn has refused to be drawn on whether the British Government will contribute extra cash to rebuild the GAA’s Casement Park.
A plan to develop the Belfast ground as a venue for the European Championships in 2028 ground to a halt in September.
The Labour government blamed their Tory predecessors for failing to progress the project, despite having promised the money would be forthcoming.
Now, Mr Benn appears to have pushed the onus for making up a funding shortfall back onto the Stormont Executive.
Around £120mn (€142mn) has already been pledged to the project, made up of £62mn from Stormont, a £42mn commitment from the Irish government and £15mn from the GAA.
But the cost of development will have risen since Stormont and the GAA first agreed their contributions more than a decade ago.
Mr Benn said that Stormont had been given a significant cash boost in the UK budget yesterday and it was now up to the Executive to decide how it wanted to spend it.
He said he wanted to know what the price tag might be for whatever the GAA planned to build now that the requirement to have the ground meet a Euros 2028 standard no longer applied.
The GAA got planning permission in 2021 for their stadium which was designed to a pre-Euros specification.
In a tender document published in 2023, the cost of the 34,500 seater stadium was put at up to £140mn.
“I’m not in a position to give a commitment today,” Mr Benn told reporters.
“We don’t know what the cost is, we don’t know what the gap is, but this has been a long standing commitment of the Executive to ensure that Casement Park gets built and we need to take it a stage at a time,” he said.
“There is a certain amount of money in the kitty. The question is what kind of stadium can be afforded for the money that is there and additional funds that might be made available,” Mr Benn added.
A GAA delegation including president Jarlath Burns met with Stormont Communities Minister Gordon Lyons today.
Later, Mr Burns said the GAA was committed to building a stadium with a capacity of more than 30,000, albeit to a lower specification than would have been needed for the Euros.
He declined to be drawn on a revised cost.
“I don’t want to get into costs today because obviously we are hoping that it’s going to go out to tender soon and I don’t think that would be helpful,” he said.
