This article is from page 11 of the 2011-03-29 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 11 JPG
CLARE GAA has received the green light to proceed with the next stage of its € 5 million project to transform its landbank at Caherlohan near Tulla into a new state-of-the-art training facility for county teams.
Clare County Council planners have given planning permission for the second stage of the development that will see clubhouse, dressing room, dining room, gymnasium and toilet facilities built on the site.
Permission was granted to Clare GAA to proceed with this stage of their ambitious development on Friday, which means that the board can now proceed to tender stage and is on track, funding permitted, to have the Caherlohan project completed by the end of next year.
Design work on the project started back in 2005 when Clare GAA purchased the 60-acre Caherlohan site for € 2.2m. At the time the board received € 600,000 in grant aid for the purchase, while grant aid for the development work will be nearly € 2 million.
“Players are getting more and more professional and they need better facilities. This is the way sports clubs are going, developing modern facilities to cater for all of their members,” according to Niall Fitzgerald of Hor- gan-Lynch, who are engineers for the project.
“At Caherlohan, there is planning for seven pitches and one all-weather pitch. There will also be covered accommodation for 1, 500 patrons. It is expected that phase one will be fully operational by the spring of 2012, ” he added.
The new facility will ensure that Clare teams teams have access to training facilities which will be the envy of most other counties in Ireland, a project that county board secretary Pat Fitzgerald has hailed as “a massive financial undertaking in a time of economic depression”.
At last December’s Clare GAA Convention, Fitzgerald blasted successive governments for refusing to support the project. “The thank you Clare GAA has received in turn by way of funding as regards the project, is zilch.
“Without the € 1.8m contribution from Croke Park, we would have had to self-fund the project, something I believe in the current climate would have been virtually impossible but I believe we, the clubs and the people of Clare, will rise to the challenge. There’s tremendous goodwill towards the association at county level and such positivity will, I believe, enable us to bring the project to fruition,” he added.