Proposal to develop 'publicly-owned' event centre in Cork city defeated at special meeting  

A PROPOSAL to change tack in the delivery of the delayed Cork Event Centre and develop a “publicly-owned and operated” facility fell at a special meeting of Cork City Council yesterday evening.

The special meeting contained just one item on the agenda, a resolution proposing that Cork City Council “rescinds the request for additional funding from central Government in respect of the contract with BAM for the Cork Event Centre and instead secures central Government funding for a publicly-owned and operated Cork Event Centre”.

It followed the serving of a Section 140 notice at the council’s February meeting by An Rabharta Glas councillor Lorna Bogue, which was also signed by Workers’ Party councillor Ted Tynan and Socialist Party councillor Brian McCarthy.

Speaking at the meeting, Ms Bogue criticised what she described as a “lack of transparency” around the project.

“This is an opportunity to halt this process and plot a sure way out that gives us a public resource of which we are in democratic control,” she said in relation to the proposed resolution.

Ms Bogue urged the council executive to furnish councillors with the “contractual information” around the event centre, even if that required a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to be signed by councillors.

Councillors were told by the city council’s chief executive Ann Doherty that “no money has been paid to anybody” in relation to the project.

“Just to confirm, there is no contract to share with anybody because there is no contract, it will be a funding agreement once the grant is agreed,” she said.

“At the moment, there is a grant of €57m.”

Ms Doherty stressed that the project is “not a fully-funded public project”, but it is rather a “partnership”, with private sector investment also.

'A disaster'

Speaking in support of the proposed resolution, Socialist Party councillor Brian McCarthy said the event centre project to date has been a “disaster from start to finish”.

“The amount of public money that’s gone into this has gone up and up and up with nothing being delivered for the public,” he continued, calling for “another contractor” to be appointed with an “agreed timeframe and budget for delivery of the event centre”.

Meanwhile, Workers’ Party councillor Ted Tynan said he supported the proposed resolution “100%”.

The consortium that won the tender for the centre, BAM and Live Nation, was initially expected to benefit from a €20m State aid package, which was later increased to €50m and then to €57m.

It was revealed at a meeting of Cork City Council in December that the event centre project would require an additional funding allocation following the completion of detailed design.

Economic impact 

Speaking yesterday evening in relation to the background of the event centre, Ms Doherty said such a facility has been a “long-term priority” for the city.

She said that in 2013, Cork City Council engaged PwC to undertake an economic analysis of same.

The report, she said, concluded the existence of market failure, meaning that much of the financial benefits of an event centre would not be realised by private investors, but would accrue to businesses across the city.

Therefore, an event centre could be “driven by the private sector, but that it would need public funding in order to make the capital side of it work”, she said.

Ms Doherty told city councillors to consider that, if they agreed yesterday evening to adopt the resolution of progressing a publicly-owned and operated event centre, it would “considerably delay” the delivery of such a facility and asked elected members to consider the economic impact of that.

The resolution fell with three votes in support and 25 against.