Ciarán Hancock

Welcome back, this is Inside Business with Ciarán Hancock.

Now, plans for a €250m winter sports arena in Cherrywood, South Dublin are advancing.

This week we learned that several US and Canadian ice hockey stars, including some former Stanley Cup winners, have signed on as investors in the project.

Eamon Burke-Kennedy of the Irish Times has been covering the story and I began by asking him to outline who these investors are and what their involvement means for the project.

Here we go.

Yeah.

So the main driver behind this project is Prime Arena Holding Sewer Day.

Now, years ago, talk of building a winter sports arena in Dublin, people would have laughed at this idea.

But actually, it doesn't sound so mad now because we have a nice hockey team up in Belfast that seems to be doing OK and seems to draw crowds and so forth.

And Ireland's participation in winter sports has kind of been generally increasing, nudging along year by year.

And there's a lot of money in the country as well.

And is there an appetite within the British League to accept a team from Dublin?

There were ice rinks in Dublin smaller.

Yeah, Dobbins Barn.

Dobbins Barn and so on, yeah, yeah.

I mean, there is an appetite for ice skating as a leisure pursuit.

We see that at Christmas, don't we?

In Dundrum, for example, they put in a temporary ice rink, it lasts for a couple of months and, you know, families go out and have a bit of fun and so on.

You see that in New York as well, famously in Manhattan.

Yeah.