Croker debt free

For the first time since the project to redevelop the stadium began more than 20 years ago, Croke Park is debt free. Stadium director Peter McKenna announced the news in his media presentation of the stadium accounts yesterday.
He was uncertain if the old stadium had ever been debt free. “I’m not sure if it ever was. I think it always had debt associated with it, even prior to 1993. Maybe not, it’s a very hard comparison. The building is so much different than it was 15 to 20 years ago.”
The outstanding debt of €26.5 million has been cleared leaving one internal, inter-company loan of €14.5m from the GAA to the stadium holding company PACT, an amount more than covered by other properties owned in the area such as the Croke Park hotel.
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He acknowledged, however, that the development was an historic breakthrough. “It certainly is. It’s huge.”
Croke Park received a series of government grants worth around €108m after proceeding with the rebuilding in 1993. Then Minister for Finance Bertie Ahern made an allocation of £5m (€6.3m) in the 1994 budget, followed in 1997 by his successor Charlie McCreevy’s allocation of £20m (€25.4m).
Finally in 2001, Ahern’s government provided a grant partly in recognition of the stadium costs but also to fast-track development needed for the staging of the Special Olympics opening and closing ceremonies, hosted in 2003.
The final cost to the GAA of the project in McKenna’s words “wouldn’t have been too far off €285m” of which the association had to find the balancing €177m.
Speaking about the 2013 accounts, McKenna said that he had been particularly pleased again to remit a €4m dividend to the GAA’s Central Council.
This is the same sum as last year despite the stadium accounts covering just 10 months of the year – as the company is switching its accounts to a calendar-year basis just as the association at large did last year – and the absence of any concerts in the venue last year.