Cork Event Centre: The photo that never matched its promise

TO CALL a relatively well-known picture “iconic” usually reveals an inability to think of any better word for it, so perhaps we should choose another term for the February 12, 2016, photograph of the sod turning for the Cork Event Centre. Ill-fated. Cynical. Infamous. Opportunistic. Accursed.

The 6,000 seat multi-purpose centre was initially expected to be completed by 2018, so whatever you want to call it, with the centre still unbuilt, that photograph looks pretty lonesome in 2023.

From left to right on that grim, gloomy February Friday, 10 days before the 2016 general election, six people pose for the camera.

Chris O’Leary, then-Lord Mayor, looks uncomfortable, hands clasped. Joan Burton, then-Tánaiste, smiles wanly at the highest airborne sod. Then-agriculture minister Simon Coveney grins, about to horse a sod into the air, and beside him Live Nation CEO Mike Adamson beams as the sod he and then-Taoiseach Enda Kenny have jointly launched soars. For the CEO of a construction firm, then-BAM top dog Theo Cullinane doesn’t look too happy at all with the shovel of sod in his hands.

More than seven years on, with €1.5m of taxpayers’ money spent to date, not a brick has been laid on a brick and the event centre has long become a punchline.

Former Taoiseach Enda Kenny makes a fair enough point when he says “the photograph is not the cause of the delay”, and he sidesteps the question of whether it was premature (see panel).

Asked in 2019 whether the sod turning was a mistake, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said: “I think on reflection it probably was. I haven’t talked to Enda on that. I’m sure he is as embarrassed of those photos as we all are.”

(To be honest, Enda sounded pretty defiant speaking to The Echo.)

Reportedly, in Government circles these days, the PR advice on posing for photographs is “whatever you do, don’t do an events centre”.

Jonathan Healy, managing partner of Healy Communications, knows a thing or two about public relations, and he says the aim of a PR shot is to capture the story with an image.

“You will have some scenarios where you can be creative with your shot and others which are more formal, like a jobs announcement or, in this case, a sod turning,” he says.

“Your standard PR shot for a sod turning will generally involve the key people and shovels. Often when things go wrong with the story, a PR shot can come back to haunt the client and this is what has happened here.

“If they had known then what they know now … for this particular event, a safer, but less creative, option would have been to stand pointing at a scale model, or a 2D artist’s rendering of what a potential building might look like. However, hindsight is 20/20.”

He quotes Shakespeare on the many slips twixt cup and lip and concedes that events — or centres — may not always go to schedule.

“That’s a lot for a politician to consider when posing quickly for a photograph, and there were few people at the time who didn’t expect work to begin on that site soon after the photo was taken,” he says.

“The shot itself wasn’t unusual in its set-up, but subsequent events have meant that it is one of those that will keep being used again and again until construction begins.”

Peter Horgan, the Labour Party’s local area representative for Cork South-East, has spent years seeking answers on the progress, or the lack thereof, on the event centre.

“Looking back now it’s clear that the infamous sod turning was a mistake,” he says, “but no-one would have thought we’d be in 2023 without a brick laid.”

Mr Horgan suggests that there may be an argument to be made for a review of the KPMG report that was undertaken over a decade ago, the report that established the need for an event centre at all.

He also anticipates that the newly announced 10-week period of design submissions will likely result in further costs requests.

“Those requests for further public funds should be fully open and transparent. It is the people’s money, not City Hall’s. Not a department’s. The people’s,” he says.

Mr Horgan says covid-19 has been scapegoated as a reason for the delay, and he points out there was a four-year gap from the 2016 sod turning to March 2020.

“Since covid, concerts and events have resumed in stadia even just down the road in Páirc Uí Chaoimh and in Musgrave Park. The events centre project, sadly, has now become one of mirth and ridicule and a totem to the ballooning costs associated with public projects.”

Horgan says next year’s local election cycle, and a looming general election too, will probably mean the finger of blame will point to the event centre.

“I’m not in the blame game because Cork does not benefit from it but I am in the game of transparency and openness,” he says.

“The people of Cork deserve openness and transparency on projects their money is being used on without having to resort to countless Freedom of Information requests.”

Cork’s current chief executive, Ann Doherty, told this reporter last month she is confident the event centre will be up and running by 2026, the 10th anniversary of that haunted photograph. Mind you, barring any further unexpected extensions to her tenure, Doherty should be safely out of town either way by then.

The front-page story on the then- Evening Echo of Friday, February 12, 2016, was by Padraig Hoare, and it said Enda Kenny also turned the sod that day on the €50m redevelopment of the former Capitol Cineplex site.

Some 16 months later, on Friday, June 16, 2017, the same Padraig Hoare reported in the Irish Examiner the opening by RTÉ presenter Sinéad Kennedy of Homesense, the first store in the newly developed Capitol retail and office complex.

Enda Kenny

The former Taoiseach laughs when he eventually answers the phone after days of The Echo trying to get him, but he comes out swinging.

“The first thing I want to say is that Cork deserves its events centre, secondly, the photograph is not the cause of the delay and, thirdly, I hope that whatever difficulties have resulted, when differences of opinion about the provision of the events centre are sorted out, let the people have their facility, as they should have had by now.”

Asked if the photograph was premature, being from the Wesht, he answers a question with a question: “Is anything premature?

“The photograph was taken in very good faith that all of the elements that were remaining to have the matter concluded and the centre concluded were all done in good faith,” he says. 

“When you stand for a picture like that, you enquire if everything is in order, and everything was in order then, other matters arose, over which I had no control, so I just hope that whatever lingering matters that are not concluded are sorted out and that Cork gets its event centre; it deserves it.”

Asked if we will see him in Cork soon – perhaps for the opening of the event centre - he says he was always very well received in Cork, “whether it be in Mallow or Fermoy or Skibbereen or Eyeries or Allihies or ” — and here he breaks into a pretty good northside accent — “de Cidy, like, d’you know what I mean?”

Returning to the event centre, the former Taoiseach says: “My thing was always ‘Get on with it, sort these things out, provide the people with the services’. It was the same with the economy, ‘Pull it out of the cesspit, make decisions, move it on and let it fly’, and I’m quite sure that when the events centre turns the corner, it will fly.”

Joan Burton

In May 2016 Joan Burton stepped aside as Labour Party leader and Tánaiste after her party’s disastrous showing in that February’s general election. She says she is doing voluntary work and enjoying her retirement. She remembers the sod turning well.

“I left government shortly afterward and I didn’t continue to have any influence, but I thought it was a very good project, and that was the reason I supported it and agreed to be involved and accepted the invitation to be at the sod turning.

“I would still have the view that [the event centre] is something that should be opened. I personally thought it was a good project for an area which, certainly at that stage, needed quite a lot of TLC (tender loving care) to regenerate or assist with the regeneration of that particular part of Cork city.

She says that the call from The Echo is the first time “in a very long time” that anyone has spoken to her about Cork’s Event Centre, or even that photograph.

“Certainly I don’t have any capacity other than to wish the project well.”

Chris O'Leary

CHRIS O’LEARY is a local area representative for Sinn Féin in the Cork South-East ward these days, having lost his council seat after finishing just behind Fine Gael’s Deirdre Forde in the 2019 local elections, and he sounds rueful when asked about his role, as Lord Mayor, in the sod-turning photo.

“First of all, I wasn’t in the original photograph when it was taken, it was by chance one of the officials in the city council said ‘Oh, the Lord Mayor isn’t in the photograph’.

“We didn’t know at the time that the Taoiseach and his entourage were coming in to do that. I was told at the last minute that I would be requested to stand in. There was a number of things we did that day, and we went to the Grand Parade for the Capitol Cineplex development.

“As first citizen, I would turn up because I was representing the people of Cork, and being a councillor for a long number of years, I never expected to be Ardmhéara, so I had made a pledge that whether people voted for me or not, I would be first citizen for all.”

He remembers walking from the Grand Parade across to South Main Street, telling Enda Kenny that Cork really could do with a break.

“Do I regret attending it? Again, my role was to attend as first citizen, I did that to the best of my ability. I had no act or part in the decision to have the launch because there was an election coming up. I do regret that the people of Cork were, I feel, led up the garden path, but that wasn’t my doing.”

Simon Coveney

In a statement to The Echo, Enterprise Minister Simon Coveney said: “The Events Centre will be an extraordinary asset for Cork that can deliver tens of millions of euro in economic activity each year for the city.

“It has been hit by frustrating setbacks from covid and cost inflation, however, I, and the government, remain strongly committed to making it a reality.

“In recent months detailed work has been ongoing between the developer, the operator and Cork City Council on internal design and costings. Their discussions continue and are at advanced stage,” Mr Coveney added.

Mr Coveney did not respond to a request for comment on the sod-turning photograph.

Bam and Live Nation

A spokesperson for Bam said: “Bam is currently progressing with detailed design and up-to-date costings for the Events Centre. We are working with stakeholders to progress the project against a backdrop of significant construction inflation which is delaying the commencement of several projects in the industry. Bam regularly engages with national and local representatives in Cork and continues to work closely with the council on this project.”

Live Nation was asked for comment.