Editorial: It is the GAA that should meet the Casement stadium funding shortfall

​​The Northern Ireland secretary Chris Heaton-Harris has said that the government is still trying to figure out the cost of the Casement Park GAA stadium.

This is, ultimately, a very sad situation.

Any football fan would be delighted at the prospect of the Euros 2028 coming to the province, as well as the rest of the UK and Ireland. NI should be included in any such hosting, as England, Wales, Scotland and the Republic are included.

Regrettably, Mr Heaton-Harris said that the Casement money would be found, don't worry about that. That foolish pledge entrenched the GAA in its view that it did not need to contribute more to the stadium than it did more than a decade ago.

This wealthy sporting and cultural organisation, closely linked to Irish nationalist and republican values, assumed that it did not need to pay more than the £15 million it pledged more than a decade ago.

That was when Casement was due to cost £77m. The overall government contribution would then have been proportionate to its contributions to rugby and football. Since then costs have spiralled out of control. The delay is the responsibility above all of the GAA, but even so it is fair that it should get the figure that it was originally promised, uprated for inflation, from £62m to £90m+.

The GAA should then fund the shortfall, in addition to the Irish government's contribution. After all, this is an asset that the GAA alone will enjoy after the Euros.

It is tempting for Northern Ireland football supporters to say to London: just pay it, to get the games. But that will mean that at a time of financial crisis in NI, affecting health and other key services, perhaps an extra £200 million of UK taxpayer funds will go to Casement.

That would amount to political pandering of the highest order from the UK government in response to GAA pressure.