Speaking after meeting with Jim Allister MP, Sarah Herbison, of the Right Facility Wrong Location campaign, said:

“We are increasingly concerned at political support for the Irish FA’s proposed National Football Centre at Galgorm without, in our view, politicians demonstrating that they have properly interrogated the detail of what is actually being proposed.

"Last week, representatives of our campaign met Jim Allister MP and set out our concerns about the proposed development to him directly. We were surprised and concerned to find that much of the detail appeared not to be known to him, despite his public support for the proposal.

“Mr Allister has a well-earned reputation for interrogating major publicly-supported projects rigorously. He did exactly that in relation to Casement Park, on funding, on ownership, on cost transparency, on environmental risk, and on whether the project should proceed at all. We would ask him, and every other elected representative, to apply that standard here.

"The questions we believe any politician should be asking before lending support are:

• Who will own the facility and the land it is built on, and why has that ownership model been chosen?

• Is the proposed partnership and development arrangement an appropriate one for a national facility of this kind?

• Will public money be sought or provided? If so, how much, on what basis, and with what safeguards for the taxpayer?

• How was this site selected, by what process, and against what alternatives? Why can that not be disclosed?

• Is this genuinely a community facility, and what access will the community actually have to it?

• Who stands to benefit commercially, and to what extent?

• And why has there been such resistance to a full Environmental Statement, which would allow the impacts of this proposal to be assessed properly and scrutinised publicly?

"These are not peripheral or technical points. They are a matter of public interest which should be asked and answered.

“We are asking for honesty about what is proposed, transparency about how it is to be funded and owned, and a fair and correct process that reaches its conclusion in the open. Political support should follow scrutiny, not come before it."

"We came to this in good faith and with a professional argument. We instructed independent specialists in ecology, noise, lighting, roads, flooding, contamination, heritage and planning, at our own expense, because we believed that a proposal of this scale deserved to be tested properly on the evidence, and because we assumed that if we asked serious questions, we would get serious answers.

"That is not what has happened. The more questions we ask, the more we are stonewalled. Time and again, what we have run into is not disagreement about the evidence, which we would accept and could argue on its merits, but information withheld, questions deflected, and a process that has already had to be conceded as unlawful once.

“Consider what is already a matter of record:

• On 25 August, the Council conceded that its screening determination of 3 July, the decision that no full Environmental Statement was required for this development, was unlawful, and agreed to take that decision again. It has still given no date for when it will do so, and no undertaking that the application will not be progressed in the meantime.

• The reasons given for that July 2026 determination are, word for word, the same reasons given in an earlier determination in July 2025. They were written before the planning application was submitted, before its technical reports existed, and before a single statutory consultee had commented on it. We cannot reconcile that with the Council's own assurance that it had before it 'far more information than would normally be available for a screening'.

• The applicant's own consultants concluded in 2025 that this was development for environmental impact assessment. It has now been screened out twice.

• Statutory consultees have raised serious objections that remain unresolved, including a recommendation of refusal from NI Water on capacity grounds.

• We asked the Department for Communities two straightforward questions under Freedom of Information: how this project is to be funded, and how this site came to be selected. Both requests were refused on grounds of cost.

• When we set out our legal concerns formally, the response was to question our standing to object at all, rather than to answer what we had actually raised.

• The Council declined to make a Tree Preservation Order over the mature avenue trees at the proposed entrance, and declined to revisit that decision when it was challenged.

"None of that is a matter of taste, or landscape, or where anybody would prefer a football pitch to go. It goes to whether this application is being handled openly and in accordance with due process.”

ENDS

Note to editors

Some of the questions Jim Allister MP raised in relation to Casement Park:

• Public funding: In the House of Commons on 24 July 2024, Mr Allister asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how much funding he planned to make available for the redevelopment of Casement Park: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2024-07-24/debates/FA4573FA-4062-4B6E-A807-68EC1D6633B0/NorthernIreland

• Competing priorities for public money: He challenged the priority given to that spending against hospital waiting lists, arguing health and education were more deserving of additional funding: https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/62356/funding-priorities-in-northern-ireland and https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjr4pvq18ggo

• Private ownership and public responsibility: In February 2024 he asked the Communities Minister why the Department was the contracting party for the redevelopment when Antrim GAA privately owned the ground and would have sole control after completion, what legal obligations fell on the Department, and whether it had received any indemnity: https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/politics/allister-accuses-department-of-dodging-questions-on-casement-park-rebuild-4435161

• Cost transparency: He questioned why the Department would not provide a current estimated cost, and challenged the claim that this was commercially sensitive when no construction contract had been concluded.

• Income and recovering public investment: He asked for projected annual income from a rebuilt Casement Park and whether any of the project cost would be recovered from it.

• Environmental risks: He asked the Communities Minister to detail risks identified in the environmental statement, including asbestos and other contamination: https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/politics/more-questions-about-the-casement-park-rebuild-as-minister-confirms-asbestos-4590414

• Conditions attached to funding and use: He questioned why conditions relating to Section 75 duties or post-construction use were treated as commercially sensitive: https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/politics/jim-allister-unhappy-with-vacuous-attempt-to-reassure-him-that-a-new-casement-park-will-not-be-used-for-political-or-paramilitary-purposes-4538672

• Cost overruns and Executive approval: He raised potential cost overruns and sought clarity on whether Executive approval would be required.