This article is from page 2 of the 2006-01-31 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 2 JPG
THE prospect of Clare GAA leaving Cusack Park for a new purpose-built home on the outskirts of Ennis has moved closer this week after three Clare businessmen tabled a €30 million proposal with the county board.
The move by the consortium headed up by Noel Connellan, Sean Lyne and Bernard McNamara to deliver a state-ofthe-art 42,000 capacity stadium to Clare GAA in return for Cusack Park falls into line with the express wish of board chairman Michael McDonagh.
The chairman told The Clare People earlier this month that “what we would be looking at is developing a Nemo Rangers type facility in Ennis, where a developer would come in and in return for buying Cusack Park would develop a state-of-the-art 30,000 capacity stadium for us on another site in Ennis”.
He added that “there’s no sign of that happening yet,” but his wish has come true less than three weeks after he challenged property developers to bring forward their proposals about developing what he said would be “the new Cusack Park”.
Cusack Park was developed by the Ennis Dalcassians club and was officially opened in May 1936 when Clare played against Cork at minor and senior football championship level. It replaced the Ennis Showgrounds as Clare’s premier GAA venue.
In time, possession of Cusack Park passed from the Dalcassians club that folded in the late forties to the county board. In the mid seventies, the board considered selling Cusack Park for housing.
However, the board decided against this and instead, under the chairmanship of the late Brendan Vaughan a major redevelopment programme was instituted and the revamped Cusack Park was opened in 1980.
However, any plans by the board to sell the jewel in Clare’s GAA crown have been called into question by Mayor of Ennis, Frankie Neylon.
In an interview with The Clare People , Mayor Neylon claimed “Cusack Park is owned by the people of Ennis”.
Continuing, Mayor Neylon said “this field was used by the RIC to keep their horses and when the RIC was disbanded in the early ‘20s they donated the field to the people of Ennis. They are the owners.”
However, GAA secretary Pat Fitzgerald, rubbished these claims by revealed that “the County Board took control of the grounds in 1979 and the deeds of the property are now in our possession”.
This means that Cusack Park is the county board’s to sell, something that will happen if they rubber stamp the €30 million offer put before them this week.
All at the same time as the county gears up to celebrate the GAA founder Michael Cusack in this 100th anniversary year of his death.