Sports campus planning lodged

Cavan County Council has lodged plans with An Bord Pleanála for a proposed new multi-million euro sports campus for Cavan Town.

Planning permission for the Regional Sports Campus is being sought directly from the national planning authority as it is considered a 'Strategic Infrastructural Development'.

The project is being delivered by the local authority in partnership with Cavan GAA and the Royal School who all stand to benefit from the works.

Over €1M has been spent on developing the campus plan to date, secured under the Large Scale Sport Infrastructure Fund (LSSIF), however it's expected the campus will cost upwards of €30M to deliver. As a result, it will be constructed on phased development basis.

The application to An Bord Pleanála covers the townlands of Kilnavara, Lurganboy (Loughtee Upper By), Creighan and Rosscolgan in Cavan Town. A decision is due by early September.

Similar in scale to the already hugely successful Erne East Peace Link facility in Clones, it will incorporate 4G pitches for soccer and rugby; playing areas for basketball and hockey; facilities for both badminton and tennis, as well as athletics.

Later stages of development include plans for a competitive-sized swimming pool.

The proposals dovetail neatly with Cavan GAA's own plans for a new state-of-the-art facility to be built at Kingspan Breffni.

Those plans include the installation of three new grass pitches, floodlighting and a new covered stand for supporters on 24 acres of acquired land.

The ambitious development will also see facilities extended to deliver eight new dressing rooms, an athletic development centre, meeting rooms, a kitchen/dining room and a video analysis room.

"We submitted our planning application last week to An Bord Pleanala, for the whole campus, ourselves, Cavan GAA and the Royal School, all working in partnership,” explained Director of Services at Cavan County Council, Brendan Jennings. “The planning includes a large scale sports arena. There are a wide variety of other facilities incorporated in that.”

It has taken four years to get to this stage. Even without the pandemic holding things up, Mr Jennings said it required that time frame in order to ensure everything was correct.

“Investments of this scale don't come round very often. This is a once in, perhaps a lifetime opportunity, that once built stands to benefit generations to come. Every project of this scale requires time, not just in terms of getting the necessary lands in place, agreements, feasibility, business cases and preliminary design. We're now in planning phase and we will now, over the coming months while this is happening, move into the detailed design of this project. The biggest challenge then is to get the funding to build it.”

Mr Jennings confirms that the council has submitted applications for funding under the PEACE Plus programme, a new €1.14bn funding programme designed to support peace and prosperity across Northern Ireland and the border counties. He also says as other funding streams come available that the council will apply for those too, in particular the LSSIF.

“Even with both of those together that might only help deliver phase one. This is a very large, ambitious project. It will take a number of phases to deliver. But, once complete, it will be something Cavan can be proud of, and will cater for the needs of this county and beyond.”