The Leinster Council are again pushing the possibility of building a 40,000 capacity stadium on the M50.
Chairman John Horan said that rather than throwing too much resources into developing existing county grounds, there was a plan 'to have one regional stadium strategically placed so that when you have major games that you would be able to facilitate them'.
He laid out their thinking at the launch of the province's Strategic Vision and Action Plan 2015-18
If you ever go out the M50, there’s a junction seven and a junction nine but there’s no junction eight. Junction eight was meant to be obviously between seven and nine and if you go out there and look on the right-hand side, outside the M50, there’s a big land bank in there and some people speculated, put in junction eight and put in a stadium in there on that land bank.
You won’t be a million miles away from the Luas line. You’ll have the infrastructure of the motorway and you won’t be bringing everyone straight into the traffic nest that’s in Dublin, that if people are travelling to it that you’re not going to cause congestion and then, in turn, you’ll have a 40,000 seater stadium where you probably won’t get residential complaints about concerts. It has been looked at without a very deep study but it has been looked at as a possibility, yeah...
I’d say it’s on the cards.
The GAA are open to allowing the prospective stadium to form part of the 2023 Rugby World Cup bid.
The M50 stadium proposal was first raised by Liam O'Neill after complaints about Dublin's home privileges.
Students of geography noted at the time that the M50 is also in Dublin. The GAA seems to be of the view that the M50 is neutral territory. A rootless place that is home to no man.
