BY MARK McKELVEY
m.mckelvey@ulsterherald.com
A FINAL decision will be taken in the autumn on the location for a 35,000 seater multi-sports stadium, Minister for Culture, Arts and Leisure Edwin Poots said this week.
Plans have been drawn up for the controversial stadium to be built at the former Maze prison site, which would attract major fixtures in soccer, rugby and Gaelic games. However, there is significant opposition for the plan from those who want the proposed new venue in Belfast and from those who oppose the incorporation of a Conflict Transformation Centre on the huge site of the former prison near Lisburn.
A special meeting of the Assembly's Culture, Arts and Leisure committee was convened at Stormont on Tuesday where Mr Poots updated members on the proposed stadium.
West Tyrone Sinn Féin MLA Barry McElduff, who chairs this Assembly committee, said this engagement was much needed and was glad the minister stated clearly the stadium had to be shared by all three sports and command cross-community support.
"The four party leaders had all endorsed the notion of a multi-sports stadium at the Maze/Long Kesh site in the middle of 2005 when the Maze/Long Kesh regeneration panel made its recommendations and the ministers were urged to act swiftly on this report," Mr McElduff said.
"One of the most significant things to come out of this meeting was, when I asked Edwin Poots had anything changed since then, he responded in saying that the four party leaders who agreed at that time had not changed their position and all had supported the Maze/Long Kesh site in principle for this multi-sports stadium.
"I am pleased the minister and department reiterated their commitment to a shared future stadium. This can only be sustainable with the involvement of the GAA because of the numbers they attract to matches."
Sports Minister Edwin Poots has backed the Maze location, but some of his DUP colleagues are against it as they are unnerved by the inclusion in the plan of the proposed Conflict Transformation Centre. This would incorporate one of the H-Blocks and the prison hospital where ten republican hunger strikers died in 1981.
Mr Poots's party colleague Enterprise Minister Nigel Dodds warned that unionists would not stomach a stadium linked to anything which "glorified terrorism".
"There will have to be cross-community consensus," he said. "However, unionists will not support anything that says terrorism was right, that the killing of innocent individuals was right."
Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness insisted there was no prospect of the Conflict Transformation Centre becoming a terrorist shrine.
"I do not know anybody who has advocated a Conflict Transformation Centre who is arguing for a shrine of any description or arguing for there to be what some call a shrine for terrorism," he said.
"The whole issue of a stadium on the Maze site is down to the Culture, Arts and Leisure Minister. Everything else on the Maze site will be decided by the Office of the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister. As Deputy First Minister, I am not arguing for any kind of shrine and the First Minister Ian Paisley knows that.
"But let us be also clear if there is no Conflict Transformation Centre, then there is not going to be a stadium."
