Neylon lashes out at Clare GAA

Tuesday, 06 January 2009

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TJ Flynn

In the wake of the fall through of the proposed sale of Cusack Park, Ennis Town Councillor Frankie Neylon has accused the GAA in Clare of having more interested in increasing their assets than in the promotion of games.
“It’s become all about money and the GAA are only interested in landbanks, they haven’t promoted the games,” he told The Clare People on Monday. “They’ve land in Tulla that won’t be touched, they’ve land in Crusheen and the place in Tulla is basically a farm. So all they’re going to be left with is a bit of farmland. But they might be interested in going into farming. Who knows?
“They might be looking to produce a few goats to send over to Indonesia.”
Councillor Neylon was vocal from the outset in his opposition against the sale of the grounds and was adamant that the people of Ennis are the rightful owners of the stadium. He also helped establish the Save Cusack Park Committee, which he now says will continue to pursue the issue of ownership.
“It’s definitely the end of the talk about the sale of Cusack Park and we’re definitely going to go all out to show that the people of Ennis are the owners of Cusack Park and not the county board.”
He added that the committee was currently working on a proposal for Cusack Park before describing Ennis Town Council’s decision to not re-zone the stadium for commercial use as a “great conclusion.”
“It goes to show that no matter how hard you try, you can’t buy something off of somebody if they don’t want to sell it to you. And the bottom line is that: the people of Ennis did not want to sell Cusack Park. So in that sense, it was a victory for the power of the people.
“The response was huge from the people but in fairness, we got a great response from clubs and delegates throughout the county. None of them wanted to move from Cusack Park.
“There was a lot of talk about the development creating jobs for Ennis. We heard that up to 1,000 jobs would be created, but the developers failed to give us any clear indication of where these jobs would come from. There were rumours about hotels and restaurants being built, but there were a lot of mistruths being delivered.
“We were getting little tit-bits from the GAA and from the buyers but nothing concrete and people saw through that in the end. So it was a case of a lot of mis-information being given out.”
He has now urged the Clare County Board to focus on developing Cusack Park and says if they fail to do so, the stadium should be passed to Ennis Town Council.
“I’d now like to see the county board spending €20 million on Cusack Park. They should develop it in the same was as Thomond Park has been developed, with conference facilities and underground parking.
“For the county board to say that Croke Park won’t give them the money to develop Cusack Park is rubbish. Only a few years ago the ex-president Sean Kelly was saying that the biggest challenge for the GAA was getting rid of money.
“If they don’t want to develop it, Ennis Town Council will gladly take it off of their hands if that’s what they want and we’ll look after it. We’ll develop it as a municipal park and if they want it for the hurling or the football, we’ll let them use it.
“And if you really look at it, the move of the GAA’s main office out of Cusack Park and into Clarecastle was an insult to Michael Cusack. There wasn’t much thought put into it and it left a lot of people very disappointed. It was as if they had already sold the place and they just couldn’t see themselves staying.”

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