This being, as it is, the second full week of August, it was a racing certainty that some backbench Irish politician would take the opportunity to grab the free media that would be on offer for a “we should host the Olympics in Dublin” press release. Such a statement was always going to be peak silly season media content. The only question was who would get it out first.
Senator Malcolm Byrne, take a bow:
Mr Byrne said that such a bid would “almost mark the sesquicentenary of when Ireland began competing in the Olympics as an independent State”.
“There will probably be a few eye rolls at this suggestion, but I think we could start to develop a plan so that we have the world class infrastructure to host major international events and there is none bigger than the Olympics,” he said.
Leaving the costs and all other issues aside, there is, of course, one over-riding problem with Ireland hosting the Olympic Games: The weather. It’s called the summer Olympics because some of the sea-going sports simply require the kind of weather that you can guarantee at this time of year off the south coast of France, but which you might get one day of the week in Doolin if you are very lucky. That’s before you consider that outdoor events like skateboarding and wall-climbing might seem less appealing when conducted in the kind of sideways rain that we customarily get in this country all year around.
Nevertheless, we’ll make an assumption for the sake of fairness that the weather wouldn’t be a factor in the decision of the International Olympic Committee to award the games to Ireland.
Senator Byrne, to be fair, cannot be accused of being overly ambitious: He wants Ireland to bid to host the 2072 Olympic Games, which are 48 years away. Were we to succeed, he would be 98 years old at the opening ceremony. Given that kind of lead-in, you might think Ireland should be able to put a compelling bid together. But that’s also precisely why it wouldn’t happen. The further away you shunt the ambition, the more it becomes the next Government’s problem.
If we were going to do this, we’d need to do it on a much shorter timeframe.
Paris, this year, has spent just under €10billion to host the games. We can assume that for Ireland, those costs would be dramatically higher, even allowing for inflation. My guess would be that in additon to the fixed costs, we’d need to invest in several multi-billion euro infrastructure projects.
Paris, for example, was able to leverage enormous amounts of existing infrastructure – both sporting and civic – that simply doesn’t exist in Ireland. The tennis and boxing took place at Roland Garros, a pre-existing tennis venue for which no equivalent exists on this island, and would have to be built from scratch. In place of an Olympic Stadium, they used the Stade de France. Ireland does not have an Olympic Stadium and the options would be to construct one from scratch or to re-purpose Croke Park, including getting rid of Hill 16 and making it all-seater. For the cyclists, we are currently building a national velodrome, but it lacks the spectator capacity you’d require for an Olympics, which also goes for all our Olympic-sized swimming pools. I could go on, but an Olympic bid in Ireland would require the construction of multiple stadium-sized venues from scratch. And would they ever be used again? What does Ireland do with a Roland-Garros sized tennis venue once the games are done?
This is where Byrne’s idea really falls down: Ironically, Ireland would probably be better placed to host the Olympic Games in 2040 or so if the job was awarded us tomorrow than it is to plan to host in 2072: The pressure of actually hosting the games would bring the best out of the Irish Government, which, say what you will about it, works at its most efficient in a crisis. But planning to host the games in 2072? Nothing would get done, because of all the rows about where certain things should be and all the complaints about spending money on a thing that might never happen.
Byrne’s plan appears to be that the Government should invest in building out Olympic games infrastructure for a set of games we might not be awarded, which is backwards: The way to do this would be to bid for the games and then make the necessity of investment the spur to get the work done.
Indeed, this is the positive case for an Irish bid for the Olympics: One might argue that the pressure of hosting such a global event would spur urgency for infrastructural investment in Ireland that otherwise would not be a political priority. We would need, for example, a working airport metro. We would need major across the board investment in transport. We would need major improvements to our communications infrastructure, just to host the world’s media and broadcasters. We would need to clean up the capital city and rid it of the scourge of petty crime. We would not only need new stadia, but improvements to existing ones for sports like football. The billions that would need to be spent are probably affordable, but at the moment there is little political impetus to make them.
Ireland is small enough that a “Dublin” games could, in reality, be spread evenly enough across the country: Galway or Bantry bays would appear obvious venues for the ocean-going events like sailing, weather permitting. The Rock of Cashel might make a good venue for the wall-climbing events. The men’s cycling road race could easily snake its way through Killarney national park, and so on. There’s no reason not to put a national gymnastics indoor arena in Dundalk or Drogheda.
There is no reason, other than the weather, why Ireland couldn’t do this. The problem is that if you long-finger it, as Byrne would, it will never happen because it’s too daunting. If we were going to do it, we’d have to be much more ambitious than that.