Oral Answers to Questions

Jim Allister Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Claire Hanna (Belfast South and Mid Down) (SDLP)]

10. What discussions he has had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on funding for the redevelopment of Casement Park.

[Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)]

11. How much funding he plans to make available for the redevelopment of Casement Park.

[The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Hilary Benn)]

The Government are committed to ensuring that Euro 2028 benefits the whole of the United Kingdom. We are working as quickly as possible with all partners to assess the options on the Casement Park project.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hilary Benn]

I think we all wish Armagh well in the all-Ireland final. The Executive are committed to the Casement Park project—it has been a commitment for over a decade now—but it has not progressed. Windsor Park got an upgrade, Ravenhill got an upgrade and it is important that Casement Park is built. That is why I said on my recent visit that one way or another that project needs to be completed.

[Jim Allister]

Will the Secretary of State explain to the 356,000 citizens of Northern Ireland who await out-patient appointments and to the 94,000 who await in-patient admissions why, in the Government’s view, it seems to be a priority to pour hundreds of millions of pounds into a GAA sports stadium instead of fixing our health service? If the Government commit money and the Euros do not come to Belfast, will the Government not be in a position in which the rugby stadium and the football stadium did not get a penny of Treasury or Northern Ireland Office money, but the GAA did? How could that be fair and how could that be proportionate?

[Hilary Benn]

I hope very much that sport will be a force for unity in Northern Ireland, rather than a source of division. When it comes to the health service, the hon. Gentleman makes a very powerful point. The state of the NHS in Northern Ireland, with the longest waiting lists in the United Kingdom, is a function, if I may say so, of decisions that the Executive have failed to take over many years. The people of Northern Ireland want to have a better health service, and that needs the plan to which the new Health Minister is committed.