BY RONAN SCOTT
r.scott@gaeliclife.com
Sources within Donegal county board have revealed that the search for a site for the proposed Donegal Centre of Excellence has been massively hampered because of the amount of available sites within the county.
The county board had expected to hear a report from the committee who are dealing with the issue last weekend but that never materialised, leaving them in the dark as to when exactly the best site will be revealed.
Apparently the county board have been shocked by the amount of viable sites that have suddenly come available for purchase. As a result it has taken a lot longer for the committee to evaluate each site.
Despite the fact that a meeting was supposed to be held a week ago, County PRO Seamus O'Donnell said there has been no further movement on the issue.
"All we can say at the moment is that we are expecting to be updated at Monday night's council meeting. We are waiting on them [the committee] to report back," he said.
The expectation is that the county board are going to err on the side of caution despite the fact that it was originally thought that the purchase of the site, never mind the selection of a venue, would have been dealt with in a matter of weeks rather than the four months it's taken to get this far.
Back in December County chairman Sean Kelly announced that they were planning to develop a state-of-the-art training facility in the Killygordon area.
That was met with shock by the delegates who voted to put the brakes on that deal so as to allow clubs to have an input.
Since there are few members of the county board who have an in depth knowledge of purchasing or evaluating land, it was deemed necessary that committee should be a mix of county board members as well as knowledgeable people unconnected to the county. Those external business men are assisting the chair of the committee, Brian McEniff, in the appraisal of the ten sites put forward.
It seems that not only were the county board unaware of the amount of sites available, but also the complexities involved in selecting a suitable site.
First and foremost, the fact that there is so much land available to be bought means that every site has its own positive and negative attributes that makes the selection process all the more complex. According to O'Donnell the situation is akin to buying a house, in that you wouldn't put down the deposit on the first home that you look at. However, buying a house takes a long time and as a result it would seem that there will be no quick fix when it comes to picking their site.
Interestingly it was only when the county board intimated that they were keen to buy a piece of land that sites became available. Sources state that farmers within the county are eager to sell their land, however they are unwilling to do it publicly, because they don't want to make their financial situations public. Considering the downturn in the economic market, land prices are on the slide and it is no surprise that they are eager to make money on their land. Therefore a private deal with the GAA is a very inviting option.
As a result the county have now got to decide which of the ten sites is the most viable. Yet it is not the case that the biggest or most central piece of land will be selected. Factors such as altitude, infrastructure, the quality of the ground, the size of the venue and, perhaps most importantly, the price must be factored in.
