Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): We welcome Karen Eyre-White, who is the CEO of the Sports Grounds Safety Authority (SGSA), and Ken Scott, who is an inspector with the authority. Please make your opening statements, after which we will ask questions.

Ms Karen Eyre-White (Sports Grounds Safety Authority): Thank you, Chairman, and good morning to all. I confirm that I have no conflicts of interest to state. We welcome the opportunity to appear in front of the Committee and assist in your inquiry into emergency exiting plans for the redeveloped Casement Park stadium.

I will start by setting out some information about the SGSA and our limited involvement in the Casement Park project to date. I am chief executive of the Sports Grounds Safety Authority, and I took up post in July this year. Prior to that, I worked as a civil servant in the Home Office and the Department for Transport in London. I am not a technical specialist in safety at sports grounds. I am accompanied by my colleague Ken Scott, who is one of the Sports Grounds Safety Authority's nine inspectors and has a wealth of experience in this area, which I will ask him to set out shortly. He will answer the technical questions from the Committee today.

I am aware that there has been debate at previous Committee meetings about the SGSA, our remit, our experience and expertise, so I will first set out who we are and what we do. The SGSA is the UK Government's expert body on safety at sports grounds. Our purpose is to ensure that all spectators can enjoy watching sport in safety. We pride ourselves on our core values of excellence, independence, integrity and partnership working, and our expert guidance is based on our experience and the best available evidence.

In England and Wales, we have a statutory duty to regulate local authorities in their oversight of safety at the 92 football clubs in the Premier League and the Football League, and at Wembley and the Millennium Stadium. Local authorities issue safety certificates to these grounds, and we ensure that they are discharging this duty appropriately. We also issue licences to those 94 stadia to enforce the Government's all-seater policy. In addition to this statutory role, we provide advice and guidance, set standards and collaborate with a range of partners to share and promote best practice in safety design and management at sports grounds. We advise a variety of sports and work internationally to share our expertise. As well as in football, we have experience advising on design and safety management in rugby and cricket, including advising Lord's cricket ground, and we are also providing technical safety advice to support the development of the new Perth Stadium, an 80,000-capacity Australian Rules football and multi-use sports ground in Western Australia. In the past, we have provided technical safety advice to projects including the redevelopment of Wembley, Ascot racecourse, the Olympic Stadium and other venues for the London 2012 Olympics. We have also worked with the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), providing training in 2007 and, last year, speaking at the health and safety conference organised by the GAA's health and safety committee.

We are the authors of the 'Guide to Safety at Sports Grounds', known as the green guide, which is in its fifth edition. The green guide is a guidance document that is used globally by architects, stadium designers, local authorities, emergency services and safety officers, and it is recognised internationally as the standard for safety at sports grounds. As you are aware, Northern Ireland's red guide is heavily based on the fourth edition of the green guide. We are starting preparations to produce a new sixth edition of the green guide in the coming years. We also work with colleagues across Europe on defining European standards for safety at sports grounds, using the knowledge set out in the green guide. We are one of the only government bodies of its kind in the world, and I believe that the standard of our experience and expertise is highly respected in the sports grounds safety sector.

I will now set out the SGSA's limited involvement in the Casement Park redevelopment project. As I explained, I have been in post since July this year, but I will sketch out my understanding of the SGSA's involvement to date. Over the past two years, SGSA inspectors have been aware of the Casement Park project and the safety issues that have emerged through their representation on a variety of committees and working groups that come together regularly to discuss general issues related to sports ground safety.

In 2013, colleagues in Sport Northern Ireland sought informal, high-level advice on exiting issues at Casement Park, and, in late 2014, two SGSA inspectors had a short 30-minute meeting with a colleague in Sport Northern Ireland to discuss egress and emergency egress relating to the project. In June this year, the SGSA was asked by the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure (DCAL) to provide input to the project assessment review (PAR) process. The SGSA was initially asked whether it would be able to provide a technical expert who had not been involved in any prior discussions with DCAL, Sport Northern Ireland or the safety technical group (STG) about the stadium redevelopment programme. It was considered that this was not possible due to the breadth of representation at the committees and working groups that I have just mentioned, combined with lack of availability at short notice. The interim chief executive, Rick Riding, responded to confirm the lack of availability, and it followed from that that DCAL requested a telephone interview with Rick Riding and Ken Scott as part of its stakeholder engagement process for the project assessment review. The two inspectors were interviewed for an hour on 16 June and were asked questions of a general nature. They were not asked to comment in detail on the specific circumstances at Casement Park.

I believe that it is also relevant, in the interests of transparency, to set out two pieces of work that we are discussing with Sport Northern Ireland and the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure respectively. In July this year, Sport Northern Ireland approached the SGSA to seek its support in providing resilience to its safety at sports grounds team. In particular, this was to supplement its capacity for business-as-usual inspections at some sports grounds for a period of nine months. The SGSA agreed in principle, subject to all related parties being content. In October, DCAL wrote to the SGSA to request our participation as an adviser to the re-formed safety technical group for the regional stadia programme. Both of those proposals, from Sport Northern Ireland and DCAL respectively, are under consideration by the SGSA and will be discussed at a board meeting in the coming weeks.

We are here today to provide general advice and guidance about safety at sports grounds. I am sure that the Committee will understand that, given our lack of any significant involvement to date and having not seen detailed plans of the redevelopment, we are not able to answer specific questions that would rely on having that knowledge. Our advice will be based on the current fifth edition of the green guide and Ken's professional expertise. As I set out at the beginning, our purpose is to ensure that all spectators can enjoy watching sport in safety. We are happy to share our advice and expertise to enable the successful redevelopment of Casement Park to be delivered.

I now ask my colleague Ken Scott to outline his experience by way of introduction and to begin the substantive discussion by summarising our safety advice on the key themes that we are aware have been discussed by the Committee to date.

Mr Ken Scott (Sports Grounds Safety Authority): Good morning. I am a fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and an inspector with the Sports Grounds Safety Authority, with responsibility for northern England. I also have a lead role for Northern Ireland in the organisation. I have a lead role for rugby union and over 30 years' experience in looking at venues, issues on safety at sports grounds, giving presentations and writing technical papers on the subject. Chairmanships that I have held over those 30 years included chairing the Core Cities Group, particularly on the element on safety at sports grounds and the organisation of large outdoor events. I was also a chairman of the Sunderland Stadium of Light safety advisory group for 11 years, which saw the transition and movement from its old venue to a new brownfield site venue in Sunderland, with a stadium capacity of just under 50,000 people. For five years, I also chaired the RICS building control faculty, which looked after the building control interests of RICS around the world.

In the Sports Grounds Safety Authority, I have international responsibilities. I act primarily as a safety adviser for the Council of Europe. I have been on consultative visits with the Council of Europe, most recently to France to assist in the planning and preparation for the UEFA championships that will be held there next year. I also sit on a British Standards Institution (BSI) committee that looks at the drafting of guidance and standards around spectator facilities at sports grounds and also its European counterpart through the Comité européen de normalisation (CEN), which looks at the harmonising of standards across the EU member countries.

I recently returned from a visit to Qatar as part of an Interpol stadia group team, again to advise the Supreme Committee on its planning for the 2022 FIFA World Cup. I currently take another lead for the Sports Grounds Safety Authority in South America, particularly in Ecuador and Colombia.

I am co-author of a number of publications, such as the RICS safety certification guidance document; guidance by our predecessor, the Football Licensing Authority, on the design of stadia concourses; the recently produced Sports Grounds Safety Authority guidance document on the alternative use of sports grounds; and I have written and delivered many technical papers on the subject in the UK and around the world. Karen mentioned the fact that we are now looking to develop a sixth edition of the green guide. I have agreed to take on the lead technical role in delivering that, and we hope it will be on bookshelves by the end of 2017.

It is perhaps worth explaining briefly a few key areas of the green guide before we move into the questioning that I am sure you have for us. Hopefully, the benefit of this is that it will add value, I would like to think, to members' understanding of some of the issues that are being discussed in this Chamber.

The objective of the green guide is to give guidance to ground management, architects, engineers and related safety professionals to assist in the assessment of how many spectators can be accommodated safely in a sports ground. The green guide has one essential objective: to set a safe capacity. The history of the green guide is that the first version came out in 1973; I have a copy of the green guide, as it was then, with me. Versions 1, 2 and 3 dealt purely with existing stadia. Version 4, which is the Northern Ireland red guide version, saw a significant shift. It was produced in 1997. You need to cast your mind back to the situation in 1997. It was on the heels of the Hillsborough disaster, the report by Lord Justice Taylor and his recommendation on the all-seating requirement for sports grounds and football grounds in England and Wales. The 1990s saw a very heavy programme of rebuilding and re-engineering of sports stadia in England and Wales. The green guide was adapted at that point to reflect new development. The previous versions looked purely at existing sports grounds. The fourth edition and onwards dealt with new sports grounds. From that time onwards, the guide set out to improve the safety in existing sports grounds and to offer guidance on new or newly constructed parts of grounds.

The guide promotes a balance between good management and good design. It is important to remember that good management will not necessarily compensate for poor design and vice versa. With design, the guide advises the positioning of:

You will hear that phrase mentioned a few times this morning. The green guide also advises that exits should be easily accessible, not spaced too widely apart and that the positioning of exits should provide spectators with alternatives, so that, if an exit is rendered unusable, they can simply go to another exit to continue their exiting from the sports ground. Whilst the phrase "suitable locations" is not defined, the parameters that I have just set out promote the distribution of exits around the perimeter of a sports ground, which significantly helps to maintain exit flow, should any of the exits become unusable for whatever reason.

The promotion of "exits in suitable locations" impacts on the green guide's position for the discounting of an exit for calculation purposes. Whilst the green guide does not set hard and fast rules, it does recognise the need to understand local circumstances when making an assessment. The key to the decision on whether to discount is the backup position of having other exits in suitable locations that can take up the strain should an exit be determined to be unusable in the event of an incident. Setting the safe capacity is the key objective of the green guide. This is done after consideration of a sports ground's entry systems, its holding capacities and egress under both normal and emergency evacuation considerations.

I will now focus on the egress element and highlight the difference between egress time and emergency evacuation time. Egress time is the total time in which all spectators can, in normal conditions, leave an area of viewing accommodation and enter into a free-flowing exit system. It does not include the time taken to negotiate the entire route. The normal maximum egress time for sports grounds is eight minutes. If, for any reason — it could be that there are not sufficient numbers of exits — spectators cannot exit within eight minutes, a reduction in the final capacity may be required.

In certain circumstances, it may be appropriate to apply a shorter egress time than eight minutes — for example, if the design or management of the viewing area is such that regular observation shows that spectators become agitated or experience frustration or stress in periods of less than eight minutes. The emergency evacuation time is a calculation that, together with the rate of passage, is used to determine the capacity of the emergency exit system from the viewing accommodation to a place of safety or relative safety in the event of an emergency. The maximum egress time under these conditions can vary from between two and a half minutes and a maximum of eight minutes.

For existing construction, it is acceptable to allow forward evacuation onto the pitch as part of the emergency evacuation calculation, subject to there being sufficient exiting provision from the pitch to facilitate the green guide's principle of continuous movement throughout the exiting route. For new construction, however, whilst, in practice, spectators may evacuate onto the pitch in an emergency — I think that we would all accept as reasonable human behaviour that, if a situation develops behind you, you might automatically want to move away from it — that is fine, but this should not form part of the calculation of the emergency evacuation time. The reason why the green guide does not recommend the use of the pitch in that calculation for new stadia is that it recognises the difficulty of managing large numbers of people in an uncontrolled environment. It recognises that the risk of potential densities amongst the crowd over and beyond those deemed acceptable is high, especially when spectators have to leave that pitch at some point in the timeline.

A fundamental point of any exiting system — this applies to all types of buildings, not just sports grounds — is that exit routes should not narrow in width throughout their length. When the time to leave the pitch arrives, the movement of large numbers of people would create a funnelling effect into the exit routes, which has the potential for creating high densities amongst the crowd and the possibility of injuries at that point. It is for those reasons that the size of the pitch is of little relevance in the safe exiting of the area.

New stadia also have the advantage over existing stadia in that they are designed from a blank canvas, so it should be possible for exits that are suitably positioned and of sufficient width to accommodate the smooth, unimpeded passage of spectators to be incorporated in the design. In order to allow for the eventuality that spectators may use the pitch — for example, to turn their back on an incident in the stand — as in the case of existing stadia, the same principles apply of spectators being able to continue their egress from the ground by exits positioned from the pitch to facilitate smooth, continuous movement.

The exiting principles of the green guide are founded on escape from the viewing area to a place of reasonable safety and then on to a place of safety, which is determined as being a place outside and away from the building. A place of reasonable safety is defined as a place within the building where spectators will have protection for a limited time from the effects of fire and smoke. That is generally accepted as being a stairway, a corridor or a concourse, where a minimum of 30 minutes' fire resistance is afforded to allow spectators to continue on their route of escape to a place of safety. The pitch area can be determined as a place of reasonable safety, subject to certain conditions surrounding the materials forming the playing surface, the configuration of the roof structure, the provision of sufficient openings in the pitch perimeter fence and, crucially, that the pitch area supports onward continuous evacuation to a place of safety.

The need for smooth, continuous movement from the pitch area is significant due to the potential safety concerns for large numbers of unmanaged spectators being held in confined spaces for any time. Research has shown that crowds that are held for periods of longer than seven minutes become impatient, agitated and react in ways not normally associated with a managed crowd, often instilling concern and panic as a consequence. That is why smooth, unimpeded, well-designed and well-managed exit routes not using the pitch are promoted in the green guide to direct and manage exiting spectators.

It is worth noting at this point what 30 minutes' fire resistance actually means in relation to escape from sports grounds. The period of fire resistance of 30 minutes follows the testing requirements of materials and forms of construction under British Standards and is enshrined in documents such as building regulations. The classification of 30 minutes' fire resistance is a statement that the material or form of construction will provide structural adequacy, integrity and insulation from radiated heat for the certified period. It should be pointed out that the tests are carried out under laboratory conditions, so quality of workmanship on site is crucial to ensure that the full benefit is enjoyed. Crucially, the 30-minute period not only gives spectators sufficient time to leave the building but should afford time for the arriving emergency services to receive some form of protection before the structure reaches the end of its resistance and breaks down.

Mr Chairman, thank you for affording me the time to set out some basic fundamentals of the green guide and how we, the Sports Grounds Safety Authority, as authors of the guidance, interpret its content. As Karen mentioned in her introduction, the purpose of our organisation is to ensure that all spectators can enjoy watching sport in safety.

We acknowledge that there is no such thing as absolute safety, but we instead seek pursuit of "reasonable safety", as stated in our primary legislation, which is the Safety of Sports Grounds Act 1975. We also recognise, however, our need to adopt a flexible approach to achieve that end objective.

I am sure that members have many questions to ask of Karen and me. We will attempt to answer them during the session.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): Thank you very much indeed. I am sure that there will be many questions. I have to say that the presentation that you gave addresses many of the issues, but I am sure that will not prevent folk asking questions.

I welcome that you have been very clear that it is the SGSA that has that primary role of writing and reviewing the green guide. It is very much under your ownership in that sense. I think that is important in establishing the status of the SGSA.

I have a couple of points to ask quickly, and then I will go to others for questions. There was mention that, in July this year, Sport NI approached you about providing some "resilience" — I think that was the word — to:

It said for a period of nine months from January next year. Can you be any more specific about what the nature of that was?

Ms Eyre-White: At the time, in July when they asked for it, it was not from January; it was from earlier than that. My understanding is that it is to support the resilience of that team and its ability to continue its business-as-usual work for a temporary period while it resolves those resourcing issues.

Mr Hilditch: You are very welcome this morning. Thank you for your presentation. Ken, you spent a bit of time explaining the pitch situation. Just to recap, is it possible, particularly in a new-build situation, to use the pitch in calculating the safe capacity of the stadium?

Mr K Scott: No, it is not. Not in the calculation of the overall safe capacity. It is specifically advised in the green guide that the pitch area should not be used as part of the evacuation calculation process. As I said in my introduction, we accept that it would be a human reaction, if someone saw an incident developing behind them, to move forward, away from it. For that reason, we promote sufficient numbers of exits within the pitch perimeter fencing, which is the hoardings that you now see quite often around sports grounds, to allow for that forward movement. But that movement would not be substantial in numbers. The key to the green guide is the principle that, once people are on the pitch, what happens next is that it should then support continuous movement to a place of safety outside the venue.

Mr Hilditch: Thank you for that very clear and concise answer. During evidence gathering, the Committee was advised that, in an emergency, spectators could be held on the pitch and could be managed using stewards and high-quality public address (PA) systems. They could then exit the venue over an extended period. Can you comment on that assertion? It was given to us by a couple of witnesses who are involved in this sort of work, which was strange.

Mr K Scott: If I tie it back to the guidance as set out in the green guide, you will find that the guide is quite specific on drawing from evidence of research that large numbers of people in essentially uncontrolled environments are prone to suffering reaction that would not be classed as normal behaviour and that could instil panic amongst the crowd. I take the point that there would be some kind of stewarding input to this, so I would be interested to see how and to what extent a stewarding operation, managing potentially many thousands of people, could be effective.

Mr Hilditch: You mentioned that that would maybe take place after seven or eight minutes.

Mr K Scott: The research shows that happens after seven minutes. The green guide now says eight minutes, but its original version refers to seven minutes, from research that was carried out in the 1970s.

Mr Hilditch: Here in Northern Ireland, we have a slight difference to the situation on the mainland, which is the size of a GAA pitch compared with a soccer pitch. Would that impact on your views about using the pitch as a holding area? Would that make a difference?

Mr K Scott: Comparing the standard size of a GAA pitch with the regulation size FIFA soccer pitch shows that there is about a 30% increase in overall size if you use the maximum dimensions from both sports. As I mentioned, it is down to density, not necessarily the size of the area on which people are standing, and the potential for large numbers of people to develop increased densities that are over and above those that people find comfortable.

Mr Hilditch: In my mind, irrespective of the size of the pitch, they still have to go to the same exit.

Mr K Scott: They do, which is why I relate it to the fact that, at some point, the question is what happens next and where people go from there. At some point, people will have to leave. It is at that point of leaving that you have that funnelling and narrowing of the exiting system, which is kind of counter to the principles of the green guide. If you wanted to include the pitch as part of the exiting strategy, it would fall on the principle that the exiting route should not diminish in width throughout the course of its length.

Mr Hilditch: Some witnesses advised the Committee that the emergency exiting time for the stadium should be a maximum of eight minutes. Others contradicted that, and some stated that the emergency evacuation time could be extended for one-off serious incidents. Could you give us the view of the SGSA on that?

Mr K Scott: The two timings in the green guide are quite clear. One is the evacuation time under normal conditions, which is eight minutes, and the other is the evacuation time for emergency conditions, which can include any number of things. That would be a period of between two and a half minutes and eight minutes.

Ms McCorley: Go raibh maith agat, a Chathaoirligh. Thanks very much for your presentations today. We have had an awful lot of evidence on the issue. There is so much information that trying to absorb it all is quite a challenge. We have heard from the GAA. It has an impeccable safety record. Have you had many dealings with the GAA?

Mr K Scott: As Karen alluded to in her introduction, I attended the GAA final in 2013, I think it was: was it Donegal and County Kerry at Croke Park? I personally had very little involvement in working with the GAA, but my colleagues over the last couple of years have worked alongside the GAA to advise it. I would not question its safety record. I think the difficulty with the kind of strategic overview that I have seen of the plans for this venue is that it could perhaps be a unique situation in its positioning and exiting strategy.

Ms McCorley: The GAA has over 2,000 physical assets. It has many provincial and county stadiums, which, as you know, have capacity of 30,000, 40,000 and 50,000, and Croke Park, which is 82,500. It is probably safe to say that, on the island of Ireland, it is the organisation with most experience of building large stadiums.

Mr K Scott: I would not argue with that. As you said, its safety record is impeccable. It has vast experience. In terms of the demographic of people who attend Gaelic football matches, they have far more experience than we do. Our position is that we would hopefully like to add value to the process as it moves on from this point, so it is not necessarily about looking at the history but more at the future. Karen already said that we are keen to work, engage and add whatever value and experience we have to help to move the process on. If that was the case, we would appreciate working with it and seeing what we could do.

Ms McCorley: That is very positive to hear. As you probably know, there is a new planning application for Casement in process. We do not actually have sight of what is in the new planning application, but I think it is coming to a point of going out to consultation. What I am told is that there is going to be a very comprehensive public consultation on it, so I think it is really good news. It will be only then that people will see the plan. I presume that it will have all the pieces in place. Unfortunately, at the minute nobody knows what is in it, so we cannot really talk too much until we see it.

Mr K Scott: I was aware that there was a planning application coming through. I had a productive meeting last week with the new independent STG chair and the regional stadia programme architect. Subject to SGSA board approval next week, I am hopeful of engagement within that process to, as I said, hopefully add value to what is happening. Sometimes an extra pair or a fresh set of eyes looking across something can help.

Ms McCorley: That would be really useful, because the more expertise and experience involved in that process, the better. Where expertise is concerned, we had presentations from Populous, and Mike Trice gave extensive accounts of the projects that they were involved in. I could list them, but you probably know what they are. They are worldwide and are as big as they come. That blew me away really; the experience that was there at the table. Heron Buckingham also recounted a huge list.

I am just saying that we have the GAA with its excellent record in Ireland on safety; we have Populous and Heron Buckingham, which have worldwide experience; and then we have you, who are going to be working with the STG. All that gives me confidence. I would not see any of those groups being about to endanger anybody's lives or cut corners on safety. If somebody has some evidence to suggest that people would create a stadium that was not safe, I have not heard it yet. I have confidence, so I am very glad that you will be involved in the process.

Mr K Scott: Subject to board approval next week.

Ms McCorley: We will have a safe stadium. I would never want anything that was going to endanger anyone's life. All that gives me confidence.

Mr Dunne: Thank you very much for coming today and giving us this briefing. It has been very informative so far. You are aware of the project assessment review report, and I think you had limited input into it. We obviously appreciate that. The report talked about contingency plans in GB stadia that did not include arrangements where evacuation to a place of safety or comparative safety took longer than eight minutes. Yet those stadia were able to get certification from their local authority giving clearance to continue with their business. Can you advise how many stadia in GB use such a limited process for emergency capacity in excess of eight minutes? Are you aware of any?

Mr K Scott: We are not aware of any. That is the simple answer. If we were, we would be instructing the certifying authorities to make the necessary reduction in the overall safety capacity. I am not sure, but there has perhaps been some misinterpretation of the wording, because having seen some of the reports of these meetings, I am conscious that differences in phrasing in different documents has caused some confusion among members here today.

It is about the understanding, which is why I wanted to spell out in my introduction what eight minutes means. It is not that you need to be off the premises; it means that you need to be going from the viewing area into a place of reasonable safety or "comparative safety" as it is in the red guide.

Mr Dunne: So, as far as you are concerned no stadia in Great Britain have more than an eight-minute capacity.

Mr K Scott: We look after 94 football grounds. Of those, 92 are in the football league structure, including the Premier League, and the two national stadia, which are the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff and, of course, Wembley in London.

Our network, amongst all those venues, is extensive. I have asked that question of colleagues, and there is not anyone who has it. I cover the northern region, so I have from the borders down to the Manchester area, and I know that, amongst my clubs, the answer is categorically no. Other colleagues do not have it either.

Mr Dunne: OK. On the design aspect, are the concourses seen as places of reasonable safety? Could 38,000 be accommodated in internal concourses?

Mr K Scott: I can answer the first part of the question. They are places or can be deemed places of reasonable safety, subject to them having the necessary period of fire resistance. Without seeing the detailed drawings, I would not be able to comment on whether the concourses in this venue could accommodate 38,000.

Mr Dunne: The designer has advised the Committee that the concourses could be treated as a place of relative safety.

Mr K Scott: Sorry — that they could be?

Mr Dunne: Yes.

Mr K Scott: That is right, provided that they provide a minimum of 30 minutes' fire resistance. In the red guide, it goes further and suggests 60 minutes.

Mr Dunne: It could be up to 60 minutes. OK.

Ms Eyre-White: It is also that people are able to continue their journey to safety. They would not be used as holding areas.

Mr K Scott: Just to pick up on that, they cannot be used as interim holding areas, because if you recall, my introduction promoted, on many occasions, the fact that exiting from a venue has to involve continuous movement. The green guide promotes simultaneous — that is everyone — and continuous movement.

Mr Dunne: So, they are not seen as holding areas; they are just seen as areas where people —

Mr K Scott: They are essentially transit areas. They are routes on a spectator's way to a place of permanent safety.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): But people do not stand there and wait for a period; they have to be moving.

Mr K Scott: They would not do so, because it would be an extremely confined environment. Again, there would be very little control by management over the pressures that could be building up at the front if a logjam was occurring.

Mr Dunne: OK. Thank you.

Does phased evacuation mean that the stadium has to be designed to be evacuated within eight minutes?

Mr K Scott: It does.

Mr Dunne: Even in phased evacuation?

Mr K Scott: The green guide, again, does not support phased evacuation, although I draw your attention to the fact that the red guide, under contingency planning arrangements, mentions that it may be possible to phase evacuation. The introduction to our 'Safety Management' document also mentions that the phasing of evacuation can take place but in extreme circumstances. What we as the authors of the 'Safety Management' document mean by "phasing" is that people could leave at different stages. It does not mean that people will be held there; it means that they will go through an organised or managed process to leave the venue. The ultimate objective is that, if the decision is given, for whatever reason, to evacuate the premises, it would be evacuated and people would not be held, because then you would get into all sorts of problems of people being detained against their wishes. The confusion and feelings that could be engendered amongst spectators being held without being allowed to leave could be significant for the management of the venue.

Mr Dunne: OK. I have a couple of other questions. There has been some mention of good stewarding and good safety management arrangements. Would that in any way compensate for poor design?

Mr K Scott: The green guide, again, is quite clear that good levels of safety management are expected but that they cannot compensate for poor design, and vice versa. So, the idea is that you would hopefully develop good management systems, and that would basically start at the top. In other words, the venue owners would have good management policies in place that promote and encourage good standards and good systems of management throughout the whole safety management team, from the safety officer down to the stewarding operation on the day of a match. What you have got to give them is a good design to work with. There is an idea that the better the design, the less reliance there is on safety management.

Mr Dunne: In other words, you design out —

Mr K Scott: You design out problems. That is why the green guide for new stadia suggests that you do not include the pitch and people go out through a carefully constructed, well-managed exiting system, because the exiting systems themselves control the movement and speed of movement without the need for stewards to intervene at that point.

Mr Dunne: OK. Where do you see your input into the overall project management team? Do you see yourselves as a major player in the team right from concept through the whole project, or do you feel that you could be brought in halfway through the design stage? Where do you feel your input should be placed?

Mr K Scott: I think that the maximum benefit that we can deliver to the STG would be in the role of a consultant or adviser, as opposed to being a full member of the group. I spoke to the incoming STG chair, Danny McSorley, last week, and I think we both agree that perhaps the area of our most intense piece of work in the process will be between now and when the planning application comes forward. Hopefully, once we get involved and add value at that point, the design team can move forward if the obstacles that have beset the development up to this point can be overcome.

Mr Dunne: So, you would like to be involved very early on, before the full design.

Mr K Scott: I think that is fundamental. In the design of any venue it is important that the safety advisory group, as we call it in England, or the STG, as it is across here in Belfast, is engaged with the developer and the project team from the outset. It has got to be there from the concept. So many things that could impact on the overall design need to be resolved up front. Significantly, in the case of Casement Park, it is the provision of exiting, which could be a significant design factor.

Mr Dunne: So, your input is crucial to the overall design and should be taken on board at the very early stages.

Mr K Scott: I do not want to build our part up. The Sports Grounds Safety Authority will offer advice. I am not saying that we will necessarily be crucial to the successful conclusion, if you like, because there are many other professionals involved. We have heard from Populous, the architects, and Heron Buckingham.

Mr Dunne: Obviously, safety and emergency planning are major factors, as are quality and cost, that need to be considered right at the very start of the project. Is that right?

Mr K Scott: I would agree.

Mr Dunne: Finally, Chair, I have one more quick question on Casement Park. Have you been to the park?

Mr K Scott: I have not, no.

Mr Dunne: But you are aware, obviously, of the location and of where it is.

Mr K Scott: I have seen the basic schematic plan. Knowing that I was coming here, I also took the opportunity of looking at it on Google Maps, which I think gives you a good idea of it. Personally, in my long experience of dealing with sports grounds, many of which have been redeveloped on brownfield sites, there is not anything that matches the experience of being there, feeling the environment and sampling it. The maps give you a feeling only up to a certain point; you need to get out there. Hopefully and in the fullness of time, subject to our involvement, I look forward to having a look.

Mr Dunne: You would admit, though, that it is a challenging site, located in a residential area and considering that three sides of the existing pitch are surrounded by that area. Obviously, you have experience working on the mainland on various projects. I am sure you have seen similar sites. Do you see many challenges that could be thrown up that would need to be addressed? There will be an impact even on the environment and on local residents and their quality of life. Are they all factors that you feel will need to be fully considered? We have already established that emergency planning and safety obviously need to be there right from the start. Do you recognise the difficult environment that the park sits in?

Mr K Scott: I agree entirely that neighbourhood engagement is fundamental to success, well-being and living together as good neighbours. I cannot be specific about Casement Park because I have not seen the detailed drawings, but I refer you to the green guide, which suggests, if you like, a breathing space around the outside of venues. I do not agree that we have seen many of that type of venue because there are not many surrounded by three sides with access on only one side. Without having seen Casement Park, the principle of the green guide is that there should be a circulation space around the outside, which is good for the arrival and departure of fans.

Mr Dunne: There should be?

Mr K Scott: Yes, there should be, and not only for the arrival and departure of fans but, in the event of anything going wrong, for access to the venue by the arriving emergency services. The area around the outside is multifunctional.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): Gordon touched on the PAR report, which you have seen, of course.

Mr K Scott: Yes

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): It states:

Your are quite clear that —

Mr K Scott: We are aware of that. In answer to your previous question, my colleagues in the organisation are not aware of any.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): You have never come across that.

Mr K Scott: Perhaps there is some misunderstanding about the eight minutes. I keep coming back to people's understanding of what eight minutes actually means. You could well be in the building for a period beyond eight minutes, provided that you were in a moving stream within a protected route.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): It would be worrying, though, if we had a PAR report that included misunderstandings. That is no comment on you.

Ms Eyre-White: I should say that we have not done an exhaustive review, but we are not aware, as an organisation, of any.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): That is absolutely fine.

Mr D Bradley: Good morning, and thanks very much for your very clear briefing at the beginning of the meeting. It was very helpful.

Ken, if I am correct, you said that you had the lead for Northern Ireland in your organisation: what previous involvement have you had with projects in Northern Ireland?

Mr K Scott: I have not had any involvement.

Mr D Bradley: You had no involvement with Ravenhill or Windsor Park.

Mr K Scott: No.

Mr D Bradley: This is the first time that you have been engaged in Northern Ireland.

Mr K Scott: It is. Perhaps I should explain that a lead for Northern Ireland is not unique. We have leads in many other sporting disciplines, whether it be rugby union, which I take a lead on, rugby league or cricket. We also have leads in different territories and countries around the world. Again, I refer to the fact that I have responsibilities for Ecuador and Columbia, and colleagues have responsibilities for other parts of the world. My involvement with Northern Ireland was because the potential issues arising from this might need technical assistance. My specialism in the SGSA is in technical matters. We are a broad church. We have people who have emergency planning experience and people who have a police background, but we felt that, perhaps, if we could truly add value to the process, it might be better, as the stumbling blocks related to technical issues, for that remit to be given to me to work with people here to move the project forward.

Mr D Bradley: I just want to establish that the safety group for Casement Park had not called on your expertise until relatively recently.

Ms Eyre-White: As I explained in my opening statement, a variety of colleagues in the SGSA attend working groups about general safety issues, which have representation from, for example, colleagues in Sport Northern Ireland.

Mr D Bradley: Yes, but I was speaking specifically about Ken's role as the lead for Northern Ireland.

Mr Dunne asked when safety issues are finalised in a project, and you said that the earlier they are addressed the better. Is it not also the case that some safety issues do not come to the fore until further on in the design-build process and have to be addressed then? It is not always the case that after 14 June, say, all safety issues are resolved and no more will occur thereafter. The nature of construction is such that eventualities not foreseen at the beginning of the process will occur.

Mr K Scott: That is entirely correct, which goes back to my earlier point that it is about getting the design right first, which reduces the reliance on safety management. If, for example, you correctly position exits and they are of sufficient size, you are less reliant on safety management at some point further down the line to manage and control those areas. It also removes the fear, and it is a fear in many venues, of designing a venue for a capacity of 50,000 or 60,000 and getting a licence capacity for a smaller number because you cannot implement adequate safety management standards. It is really insurance. It is about partnership, collaboration and all sides working together for that common objective, which is to provide a venue that fits the design, hits the design capacity and can go forward to the relevant licensing authority for a certificate that rubber-stamps it and says, "Get on with it."

Mr D Bradley: It is impossible to foresee everything, and eventualities can radically change your views and the views of others. Take the recent atrocities in Paris, for example, and the incidents at the football stadium. I saw clips of the match, and, while the match was going on, explosions could be heard in the background — the crowd was cheering. The event continued, and there was no immediate evacuation. The pitch was used as a place of safety, and the staff, players and supporters remained in the stadium for up to three hours afterwards. That almost turns everything in the green guide on its head. It proves that eventualities are sometimes different from the recommendations that come forward.

Mr K Scott: Of course, we are aware of what happened in Paris, and we await the outcome of the debrief from my contacts in the Ministry of the Interior. Really, I cannot say too much about what happened, for obvious reasons. Suffice it to say — what we all saw on TV is public knowledge — that the event went on beyond the explosions heard 15 minutes into the match. The impact of social media was apparent because, whilst there did not appear to be any announcement, people became aware of what was going on in the city and immediately outside the venue. The Stade de France was evacuated under normal egress conditions on that night. The one thing that was demonstrated was that, notwithstanding the fact that a serious incident had occurred outside one of the exit or entrance points, because of the suitably positioned exits around the rest of the venue, people could be directed to a multitude of other exits to facilitate their exit at the end. When you watch the YouTube clips of people leaving, you see that they are leaving under normal conditions.

Mr D Bradley: Albeit three hours after the event occurred.

Mr K Scott: As I understand it, the crowd did not leave three hours after the end of the game.

Mr D Bradley: My understanding is that there were people there three hours after the match.

Ms Eyre-White: My understanding is that some chose to stay in the stadium because of the events. I cannot comment on why that was the case.

Mr K Scott: The number of people on the pitch was small relative to the 80,000 there on the night. Having looked at the screenshots, I estimate that 2,000 of a crowd of 80,000 remained on the pitch. The rest chose to use the normal, carefully designed and managed exiting systems.

Mr D Bradley: You said that you are waiting for a report from the French Minister of the Interior. Is it the case that you will have to revaluate the green guide on the basis of what happened at that game in Paris?

Mr K Scott: I am not going to offer a definitive response. We need to await the feedback. I had hoped to have it for today, but we have not received it. I think that what happened reinforces the recommendations made in the green guide, in that it reinforces the need for true alternative exits. It also reinforces the fact that people will, under certain circumstances, move on to the pitch and that, once on the pitch, they should not be held captive but be able to move by a series of exits from there to exit the building.

Mr D Bradley: Is there not a tension in all of this between two things? First, there are the dangers that arise within a stadium, in which case it is probably most sensible, in the majority of cases, to evacuate as quickly as possible within the eight-minute limit. Secondly, there are the threats and dangers that occur outside the stadium. In certain circumstances, it may be safer for people to remain in the stadium, rather than to be evacuated into a situation that could put them in danger outside. There is a tension there, and I am not convinced that the green guide always captures that.

Mr K Scott: The green guide does not pick up on events that could be happening outside, but when looking at the potential for having to discount an exit, it suggests that you consider events that might be reasonably possible — things that are more likely to happen than not happen. If you are aware of something that could happen, you should factor that into the design. Therefore, where the green guide is fairly non-committal on the discounting of an exit, and you are aware of the potential for something to happen outside that exit, it would be wrong not to consider that in your planning of the egress system for that venue.

Mr D Bradley: Yes, I agree, but I get the strong impression that the situation in Paris has to be evaluated by you as a body, that you will possibly look again at the green guide in light of that and that you may have to make changes and modifications to it.

Mr K Scott: I think that that is correct. I will give you some background to the green guide. We normally review or renew the green guide after periods of 10 years. The fifth edition of the green guide was written in 2008. Allowing for about two years of consultation and development, it will be about 10 years by the time that we are ready to deliver a new all-singing, all-dancing sixth edition. The difference with the next green guide is that the world is a much different place from what it was in 2008. We will have many areas to consider that we did not consider in 2008. In answer to your question, yes, there will be considerations. Will it change the philosophy of the green guide? Until we go through the process, I cannot be sure.

Another interesting thing that comes out of all the work that you have been doing is the need for us to give clearer definitions. I picked up a remark earlier about the anoraks of this world, which we are, but in a good sense. We can easily get wrapped up in what we are doing. The green guide says that it is for use by competent persons but not exclusively by competent persons.

By "competent", we mean occupationally competent. There are often deliberations by groups such as the Committee, and, if you are having difficulty, perhaps we need to look at the guide to see whether we are making expressly clear what we mean by it.

Mr D Bradley: In the case of Casement Park, the scenario that there might be an emergency situation on the Andersonstown Road came from the PSNI, and it threw into doubt the existing safety arrangements. Stadium design is usually based on the area within the perimeter of the stadium; not the area outside the stadium — how far would you take into consideration? There are tensions there. The initial plans take into account, as you said, what is considered to be reasonable compensation for risks that are foreseen, but where do you draw the line? There can be any sort of imagined risk at any stadium exit.

Mr K Scott: I think that you are right. What we advocate are levels of reasonable safety. There is no such thing as absolute safety. We live in a completely different world now. I am sure that it was never in the wildest dreams of the people who designed the Stade de France that it would be subject to a terrorist attack. You are quite right that the green guide does not give detailed design for the area outside, except that it suggests that, in the zoning and the development of a venue, in zone 5, or zone 4 as it is in the red guide, there be a buffer zone around the outside — an area to allow breathing space or expansion out of the venue. However, I go back to what I said earlier: do you need to discount an exit? If there is the possibility of something happening outside that exit, you really need to consider it. It is the "What if?" scenario. If you cannot use that exit, what are your options? What are your alternatives?

Mr D Bradley: Finally, I very much welcome the fact that, hopefully, your expertise will be available to the new safety technical group. I am sure that your work, along with that of the design team, the safety technical group and the GAA, will lead to the type of facility that we want at Casement Park.

Mr Humphrey: Good afternoon. Thank you both very much for your presentation. If I have taken anything from what you have said, Mr Scott, it is that the green guide is a live document and constantly under review, as it should be. We now have the scenario of fanatical, evil terrorists. Obviously, we, in this part of the world, know all about that, having had to endure that for a long time, and still doing so to an extent.

The hub of the issue is the eight minutes and confusion about the eight minutes. Believe you me, that is the hub of the issue because, having listened to a huge amount of information and read lots of documents and many presentations from various people, there is huge confusion about that issue and about exiting and emergency exiting. Some people fail to understand and appreciate that, so I appreciate your providing clarity today.

Mr Bradley, at the end of his questioning, commented that your expertise is now available to the new safety technical group. Can you confirm that your expertise was always available to the previous safety technical group, whose chairman was, I should add, also independent?

Ms Eyre-White: As I said, we have been aware of the issues at Casement Park. We have good working relationships with colleagues in Northern Ireland, and we have been aware of the situation that has developed. We are always happy to share our expertise and advice, subject, I should say, to resource requirements. We are a very small organisation of 16 staff, and, as Ken explained, subject to board approval, we hope to be involved in the reformed safety technical group.

Mr Humphrey: I am just making the point that your expertise was available to Mr Scott when he was chairman. Presumably, he used that, not necessarily on this issue but in general.

Mr K Scott: Yes, we have always had good working relationships, preceding Casement Park, with Sport Northern Ireland .

Mr D Bradley: Excuse me, may I give a point of information? The point that I made was that Mr Ken Scott is the Northern Ireland lead on behalf of the authority and that — he confirmed this — he was not consulted formally by the previous safety technical group.

Mr Hilditch: Maybe he did not want them to. We heard that in the evidence.

Mr Humphrey: I will come to that, Mr Bradley, but I think that, when Hansard is reviewed, we will find that what I said is completely accurate on what Mr Bradley said.

Mr D Bradley: Chair, I was not saying that there was an inaccuracy; I meant to clarify the situation.

Mr Humphrey: You met Mr McSorley from the safety technical group last week.

Mr K Scott: Yes, on Monday last week.

Mr Humphrey: Has Mr McSorley conveyed to you on behalf of the GAA or have you had any communication directly from the GAA asking you to become involved in this project going forward?

Mr K Scott: Not directly with the GAA. I have an appointment in the diary to meet Danny Murphy from the GAA on 17 December or 18 December.

Mr Humphrey: That is progress. I welcome that answer because, in this room on 25 June this year, I asked Mr Murphy a question about his organisation working with your organisation. This deals with the point that Mr Bradley raised earlier. His answer was:

That body being the Sports Grounds Safety Authority.

That was the position, so the GAA has moved its position, and I welcome that.

Ms Eyre-White: May I clarify that point? The meeting with Danny Murphy is on the project that I mentioned with Sport Northern Ireland. It is about business-as-usual inspections at sports grounds; not specifically about Casement Park.

Mr Humphrey: Yes, but this deals with the point that the safety technical group was being hampered.

The Committee heard from a number of witnesses that it is the responsibility of the blue-light services, namely the police, the ambulance and the fire authority, to develop the emergency exiting plan for a stadium. Is that the case?

Mr K Scott: With contingency planning, it can get extremely confusing, but I will try to keep it very simple. The contingency plans that are prepared by the sports ground management set out the actions to be taken in response to incidents occurring at sports grounds that might prejudice public safety and disrupt the normal operation of the match. The plan prepares for incidents that are unplanned but reasonably foreseeable. It is something that you might not think will happen, but you are aware of the potential. It could be adverse weather, a failure of communication systems, a critical incident such as fire or anything else that could happen in the venue.

In England and Wales, the emergency services also have their own plans — a plan from the fire service, the police service and the ambulance service. Those are more about briefing the staff on potential arrivals: where the rendezvous points are or, in the case of the fire authority, where the hydrants will be. This is their understanding of a plan specific and unique to the blue-light services.

There is a third plan, which could confuse things. In England and Wales, we call it the major incident plan. It is the holistic plan that involves city councils, which, in the event that triage areas etc are needed, have the backup facilities to provide welfare and refuge. They can bring in lots of plant equipment to support the emergency services in dealing with whatever incident occurs.

The key bit in all three plans is talking to each other. You cannot have these plans developed in isolation; each of them needs to interact. It could be quite destructive if the plans opposed each other and caused confusion. It is about developing partnership, collaboration and getting everyone together to discuss, thrash things out and make sure that the plans proposed by the Police Service, Fire Service or Ambulance Service do not impact what we are doing as the stadium venue owners.

Mr Humphrey: Quite rightly, the blue-light services have a role, but it is not their primary responsibility.

Mr K Scott: No, no —

Mr Humphrey: That is OK. That is all I need to hear. Who, then, has the primary responsibility for the development of an emergency exiting strategy for a new stadium?

Mr K Scott: The emergency exiting strategy should come from the design team. They look at the brief given by the client, see how it is overlaid by statutory requirements and by what guidance suggests. Then, the design team produces a strategy, hopefully, and discusses it with others around the table — the blue-light services, the certifying authority and the team members of the STG — and they talk through the principles.

Mr Humphrey: When should that be done?

Mr K Scott: Right from the outset.

Mr Humphrey: Perhaps, if that had been done, we would not be in this situation. May I ask you about the exiting capacity? Is it the same as or different from the emergency exiting capacity?

Mr K Scott: Exiting under normal conditions is different. I highlighted the fact that, when dealing with existing stadia, it is possible that, as part of your emergency evacuation plan, you can accommodate people on the pitch. You cannot do that with new venues. Significantly, the time differences are around two and a half to eight minutes for an emergency and eight minutes under normal conditions. However, we accept that, under normal conditions, people might decide to linger. They might want to let the main crowds move away or chat about the events of the match, so it can take longer, which is fine, provided the design accommodates for people to evacuate or leave within that time if they need to do so.

Mr Humphrey: Finally, I want to ask a question in relation to the situation in Paris. I have never been to that ground. It may be a venue for Northern Ireland next year, and possibly I will get to it. If there were access and egress points at every point around the circumference of the ground, that would be a very different scenario from a ground where, given the layout of the stadium — as is the case with Casement Park — the access and egress points are only on certain sides of the ground. Would that not be a very different scenario?

Mr K Scott: It would be. I go back again to:

and the requirement under section 10 of the green guide for exits not to be spaced too widely apart.

We hope to promote some positivity around our involvement. One of the things that I have to draw your attention to, if it has not been drawn to it already, is the fact that the green guide, which is 220 pages long, cannot cover every eventuality. It was written in 2008, so the preparatory work for writing it was probably done around 2006, and things have moved on a bit. As an organisation, the Sports Grounds Safety Authority will never close its mind to things that have changed or gone differently, and certainly not to the significant events in Paris two or three weeks ago. The key bit written into the green guide is section 1.7 in the fifth edition, which says that there are alternative ways of compliance. You have to have that because, with modern construction methods and significant advances in the hardware and software now available to safety management teams, things have moved on. Probably, one of the biggest shifts has been in the last 10 years, particularly in the use of IT systems to help with the management and control of crowds. In the fifth edition of the guide, section 1.7 says that you can vary the provisions. There is, however, a very important health warning or caveat, which is that whatever you do to vary the provision — clearly, you have to be able to validate and substantiate it — you should seek to achieve at least the level contained in the green guide and, hopefully, if you can, take the level up.

Mr Humphrey: When you visit Casement Park, you will see why I asked that question. Thank you very much for coming here, and I welcome your involvement. It is a pity, in my view, that your expertise was not taken on board directly at the start of this process. We might, perhaps, have been at a different place, and the development might have been closer to completion, if not completed.

Mr Cree: Thank you very much, Chairperson. Will you remind me in future not to follow William? Either he reads my notes or he is trying to read my mind. He has covered most of my questions, but there are a few points that I want to make. First, had I been in the French stadium and someone was shooting outside, I would not be rushing out either, let me tell you. To me, that highlights the importance of the multi-exits that you mentioned, Mr Scott. It also suggests that a lack of communication systems might need to be looked at. Perhaps people inside the French stadium could have been told what was going on. It must have been bewildering for them. That is a very important point.

You have covered the important issues. I thank you for the annexes that you sent to us in September in answer to our questions. They were clearly set out and have been very helpful. I note that, although they are not written on tablets of stone, they are a minimum standard and may well be improved. However, you have clarified for me that safety has to be part of the design from the start.

The last attempt to rebuild the stadium did not happen. We were told, in fact, as William pointed out, that the blue-light services would look after it down the line, but it just does not happen that way. Exiting is very important, and you were saying that the difference between normal exiting, which is leisurely, and emergency exiting is the tight time frame, and that the streams of people leaving must be directed through multi-exits and must be moving. Is that a fair summary?

Mr K Scott: Yes. The green guide uses the words

I guess that it boils down to what you are saying. The green guide promotes continuous movement. In other words, you do not hold people; you allow them to move on from that point.

I will pick up on what you said about informing the crowd. It is a very tough call, if an incident is developing, to decide how much information you should share with the crowd. If you study the history of disasters at sports grounds, you will discover that they happen generally when the crowd is on the move, either coming in or coming out. I have said to a few of my colleagues that, if ever I am in a venue where a warning is given, I will be the last one out. I will want to let the crowds leave because I am more likely to be injured as a result of that movement than by the stimulus for the movement. It is important to bear that in mind.

I do not have the detail of the debrief, so I am not quite sure what that decision-making process would be. If the decision was not to tell the crowd, it has probably been proven to be a very good one because it allowed the services outside to deal with the incident. It also prevented the undue emergency movement of fans, allowing a more leisurely, normal egress. It is a very tough call. Everyone has a mobile phone now, and the families of people who were in there were, no doubt, tweeting and sending text messages to explain what was happening. It is a tough call to sit there if you are aware of what is going on, but the important thing is that, notwithstanding any of that, the option should always be that, if you need to get out, you can do so.

Ms Eyre-White: It also highlights that each incident is unique. We write guidance, but, as Ken says, we recognise that we cannot provide for every eventuality. When an incident happens, the safety team in the venue make those decisions, and they have to be competent to make them. I have absolutely no reason to think that, at that event, they were not. There has to be dynamic decision-making when a specific event happens; you cannot write it all in advance in guidance or plans.

Mr Cree: Further to Ken's point, we are in a different society now. Terrorism, unfortunately, can be at any of our doors, so we have to take it on board.

Mr B McCrea: I normally get to say Leslie's line of "Good afternoon". There are some specifics. You will be pleased to see that I have brought in a big orange box containing all the paperwork that we have had so far. I do not know whether you have had a chance to see this document, which is a schematic of Casement Park. If you look beneath it, you see the Google maps, which I think that you have had a little look at. You get the general line. Basically, it is something of a landlocked site, and you will see that, in the schematic for the numbers showing potential exits, the majority of the exiting is from the top of the page — the Andersonstown Road area that we talk about. You can see from those numbers that approximately 72% of people would have to leave under normal egress conditions from the top exit. I have the following in evidence from a Mr McCloskey who works for the GAA. Referring to egress from the stands, he said:

How many other sites are you aware of that have such a polarisation of exiting from one area?

Mr K Scott: Personally, I am not aware of any with a heavily imbalanced disposition towards exiting of 72% at one end and 28% at the other.

Mr B McCrea: When considering a new build, would you expect this to be flagged up pretty early on as something that needed to be considered in great detail at the initial stages of planning?

Mr K Scott: My personal view is that, yes, it would. The green guide supports that. I would probably mention at that point section 1.7 in the green guide, so it could well be that the designer has a plan, strategy or some kind of exiting profile that would suggest that this disposition of exits was suitable and would comply with the green guide. Without seeing that, I can say only that, on the face of it, it is unusual, but I will qualify that by saying that, if a designer has done this — clearly they have — I guess that they have some reasoning for doing it.

Mr B McCrea: For the benefit of members, I will be quoting from the Official Report of 25 June 2015. You will not have that, but it is our version of Hansard, and I will quote certain things to see what you think. Mr Trice, a senior architect with Populous, was at the Committee on that date. I was one of those who supported the GAA being supported by its expert team so that we could get some answers. Mr Trice said, in consideration of using the ground as zone 1, which had already been talked about:

Do you agree with that statement?

Mr K Scott: I do not. It is not in accord with the green guide. I think that you have heard me on more than one occasion talk about the issues involved in corralling large numbers of people on the pitch. I also think that the issue of double jeopardy, which is what we are referring to here — an incident outside has triggered the escape when a simultaneous event is happening — would not necessarily be the case. The incident outside the area of 72% of the exiting could develop or unfold at the end or towards the end of a match as people wanted to make their normal egress outside the venue. At some point, you would have to stop that movement of people, which would be quite difficult.

There is another point about the pitch. I have not seen the detailed drawings, but, going by the detailed drawings that I have seen for many large sports grounds, the people in the upper tiers would not have access to the pitch anyway. Generally, the people with access to the pitch would be from the lower tiers because of the structural configuration of a sports ground. I might be completely wrong on that with Casement Park. I have not seen the drawings, so I qualify my comment.

Mr B McCrea: Mr Trice was brought into our deliberations as an expert and senior adviser. At the meeting on 25 June, he stated:

Is that correct?

Mr K Scott: That is correct.

Mr B McCrea: He went on to say:

He must have been talking about people coming down from the higher tiers. I found it confusing that, when I asked his colleague Mr McCloskey about section 9.9 of the red or green guide, he said that it stated:

Where would be a place of safety?

Mr K Scott: The definition of a place of safety is somewhere outside the sports ground, namely, zone 5 in the green guide and zone 4 in the red guide. A place of relative safety is a place within the building that is protected for a period of 30 minutes in our green guide and 60 minutes in the Northern Ireland red guide and supports the continuous movement of people throughout the exiting route.

Mr B McCrea: My understanding of section 9.9 was that it did not mention free-moving circulation. I thought that you had to get to a place of safety, so the circulation zone would not be a place of safety; it would be a relative place of safety.

Mr K Scott: The word "comparative" is in the red guide. We use different phrases, but the meaning is the same. That is why I wanted to labour the point about what eight minutes means. It does not mean that you are out of the building; it means that you are in an area where you are afforded a level of protection on your route to egress from the rest of the building.

Mr B McCrea: During that evidence session, Mr Trice was responding to my statement that:

The architect went on to say that he thought that he could put the entire ground into an internal concourse that would be fire-protected.

Mr K Scott: This might also come down to terminology. The internal concourse area is a place of relative safety. If it meets the requirements for fire resistance and promotes and encourages a free flow, it would comply with the criteria for a place of relative safety. Mike was probably getting at it being reasonable to hold people within that area.

Mr B McCrea: Is it?

Mr K Scott: No, because it does not promote what we said in the green guide about the continuous movement of people throughout the exit route. Confining people in a concourse — I speak without having seen the size of the concourses — without knowing the end game and how long we are going to be there for and without the people at the back being able to understand that there is a blockage at the front, potentially causing a build-up of densities and pressures towards the people at the front of the exiting stream, could cause a serious incident.

Mr B McCrea: Mr Trice said:

Mr K Scott: It is.

Mr B McCrea: He went on to say:

Mr K Scott: It could well be that the overall floor space of the concourses would accommodate the 38,000 in Casement Park. That does not lead on to say that you can keep them there — you cannot get them in and hold them there — because the concourse should be part of the natural movement.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): You will resent this, Basil, but lunch is outside. It arrived five minutes ago, and we have been informed that it is getting cold. I am sure that you would not want to impose cold food on the members of the Committee or the witnesses. If we take a 10-minute break, Basil, you can come straight back in full flow — refuelled, refreshed and ready for action.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): We will make a start. Basil, you may continue.

Mr B McCrea: I was asking about the comments of Mike Trice, who, for the record, is a senior architect for Populous, which is part of the GAA's integrated consultancy team (ICT). This is just a recap to get us started again. He introduced the idea that you could use the concourses as a holding space because they had 30-minute fire safety certificates. I asked him at the time what happens if you cannot move through the space; in other words, if it is blocked. If they are on the same concourse, presumably they are going to exit via the same exit point, which has just been blocked. Do you think that that would effectively be a game changer? You cannot just hold people there. You cannot have them standing or waiting. It is not a place of safety and they are not OK if a fire is raging above them.

Mr K Scott: No, you cannot. At the risk of repeating myself, the principle of the green guide is that it supports continuous movement from the venue. The effect of holding people there is fraught with all sorts of concerns and dangers around the controlled management of the densities that people would achieve, and the fact that they have every right to leave the premises if they wish to leave. It is about supporting continuous movement throughout the length of the route.

Mr B McCrea: I have put to you what he said. Obviously, I am only reading out to you what is on the record, and you can only answer the questions that I put to you. As well as that, on the ground issue, he said:

I asked you about that earlier. I am just confirming that you think that it would not be appropriate for people to be standing around on a pitch and that there has to be movement.

Mr K Scott: I go back to the principle of continuous movement in the green guide and the dangers that I spelt out around the holding of people in an uncontrolled environment and the eventual exiting from that environment through narrow exits. You would get a funnelling effect as people attempt to leave, because they have to leave at some point.

Mr B McCrea: Yes. It is the massing and panic and all of that. I want to put a question to you. You can answer it in as gentle a way as you wish because I am not seeking to put you on the spot. Danny Murphy of the GAA is on the record as saying here:

Given the two issues that I have put to you about concourses not being a place of safety and only being viable if there is continuous movement and that the pitch is not really part of the proposition, would you have some concerns with that statement that it was fully compliant with the higher standards of the green guide?

Mr K Scott: I should probably say from the outset that we, as an organisation, have enormous respect for Populous architects. In fact, one of Mike's colleagues sits on a British Standards Institution committee along with me, so I know that its track record is excellent; it is very, very good. The comments that you have put to me are not compliant with the conditions that are set out in the green guide. However, Populous is a very good architect. It has dealt with many innovative designs around the world; some very elaborate and futuristic types of design. Whilst that is not compliant with the green guide, without having spoken to Populous and without understanding the principles at section 1.7, which is this bit about varying the provisions, I would not like to be overly critical. It could well be the case that it is saying, "Well, it isn't compliant; however, this is what we would offer in mitigation."

Mr B McCrea: That is why I offered you the opportunity to respond softly. Had you been here and heard it, I might have asked you a harder question. However, I will tell you that it comes down to the nub of what is in front of us as a Committee. The advice was that we need to get people out in eight minutes and the counter-advice was, "No, we have to get them to the concourses in eight minutes and we could use the pitch." There was then a discussion about whether or not that was allowed. My opinion, because of the first principles that you mentioned about massing and panic, is that that is not acceptable. That is what we needed to sort out.

You have made a great contribution, and all colleagues around the table should take some comfort that you are here to try to help if your help is required and that you can go off and talk to people. I have said the same to friends and colleagues in the GAA. However, I will put this last question to you because it was raised earlier. In a memo from Antoinette McKeown of Sport NI, she said that she had written to Danny Murphy saying:

Are you aware of that agreement with Sport NI?

Ms Eyre-White: Did she specify when that agreement was made?

Mr B McCrea: That was 26 November 2014.

Ms Eyre-White: Without wishing to speculate, that might coincide with the timing of a short meeting that another colleague had with —

Mr B McCrea: No, that was a year later. This was the year before that.

Ms Eyre-White: So it was 2013.

Mr B McCrea: Yes. It was not taken up because Danny Murphy of the GAA came back and said, "Listen, we have some other disagreements on it". The point that I am trying to get across on the record is that it would have been useful to have had your expertise involved at the time. That was on offer but, for other reasons not to do with the professionalism of your organisation but pure internal politics, that did not happen. You do not have to respond to this, but I just want it on the record. I ask that the GAA and its design team engage properly and fully with you because I think that everybody is interested in drawing on your expertise. There is no point in us trying to push water up a hill. These are serious constraints with the site and coming out onto the Andersonstown Road if things are not available. There is no point in ducking the issue. We will have to address that.

Mr K Scott: I would like to add a comment to that. The whole idea behind my meeting with Mr Murphy in a couple of weeks is primarily about the support that we might give to Sport NI, but I would also like to think that we can give confidence and comfort, through that meeting, that we want to work together with the team, that there is a line in the sand and that we come to the party without any prior involvement, or certainly with very limited involvement. I am not saying for one minute in front of everyone here that we have the solution, but we owe it colleagues in Sport Northern Ireland, to you as a group and to DCAL to at least look at it. If there is a solution, we will offer that and offer support on working forward with it. I would like to think we can be part of the future of this and that it is not necessarily about who said what and what happened in the past.

Mr Ó hOisín: Good afternoon, folks. Part of what has dogged this inquiry is the issue of interpretation and maybe the issue of subjectivity. That is the reality; it is how people have interpreted it to date. Are you aware, Ken, of a conference called by the GAA in May 2014 on health and safety issues and on event-day contingency planning?

Mr K Scott: A conference between —

Mr Ó hOisín: The SGSA made a presentation to that event.

Mr K Scott: To the SGSA?

Mr Ó hOisín: The SGSA made a presentation at a GAA —

Mr K Scott: I am not aware of that. It was done by a colleague of mine. If that coincides with a date that —

Mr Ó hOisín: That was attended by the national leadership, the provincial boards and all the rest of it so, obviously, the Ulster GAA board would have been represented.

Ms Eyre-White: My understanding is that another SGSA inspector attended that conference.

Mr Ó hOisín: OK. I do not have a box like Basil, so I am not going to go through ancient history here. You talked about seeing basic schematic plans such as the map that you showed. Is that a basic schematic plan?

Mr K Scott: It might have been a little bit more — I do not want to offend anybody — professional than that. If I were looking at a new design, I would expect to see the layout plans, the sections of the different stands, the capacity and the floor areas etc so that you can use all of those; they are all integral, key parts of assessing the capacity.

Mr Ó hOisín: OK. At this point, SGSA has not had a chance to review any detailed planning for Casement — contingency planning, event-day planning or major incident planning. None of that has been done.

Mr K Scott: I am not sure whether they have been prepared. I do not know whether they are in existence.

Ms Eyre-White: We have not had sight of them.

Mr Ó hOisín: OK. There is a letter from you, Karen, to the project sponsor on 1 October, in which you say that the inspectors have had sight of high-level schematic layout plans.

Ms Eyre-White: Yes.

Mr Ó hOisín: Right. Does that contradict what you said?

Mr K Scott: No. It is what I mentioned earlier: if we were assessing a new venue, I would expect to see full working drawings of how it would be built and what the gradients of the stands would be etc. Lots of important design elements fit into the overall design strategy for deciding what a safe capacity will be.

Mr Ó hOisín: You talked about IT earlier, Ken. You might be aware that there is computer-generated imagery.

Mr K Scott: I have seen the things on the Casement Park website, which is the architect's vision of what it will look like.

Mr Ó hOisín: All right. As I say, we are where we are. I certainly look forward to the new plans coming through. I think that people have learned quite a bit here. The bottom line is — you are not over the plans, and you are not over the event, contingency or anything else planning — that there surely have to be examples. I know, particularly in northern England, because I lived there for some time and went to a lot of games, that there were a lot of old traditional stadia in inner-city areas that were on restricted sites, and all the rest of it. I am possibly asking you to be subjective because you are not au fait with the site or the plans, but could it be delivered on that site?

Mr K Scott: Without seeing it, in fairness —

Mr Ó hOisín: I take that on board.

Mr K Scott: We very strongly support the development but, in fairness, we need to look at the plans first.

Mr Ó hOisín: Turning to calendar of events, subject to your own board approval, which is coming next week, as I understand it, the first meeting of the STG is on 17 December, and then you are meeting the Ulster board of the GAA.

Mr K Scott: Yes, Mr Murphy has agreed to meet me on the morning of 17 December. I think that might have had some influence on the timing of the STG meeting. Knowing that I am going to be in Belfast, it would be a good use of my time and possibly that of others for us to meet, subject to board approval.

Mr Ó hOisín: Obviously there can be major incidents at events, such as at the Stade de France in Paris. That was a major incident, and there is obviously the whole scenario of bronze, silver and gold set-ups for all of the blue-light services and all the rest of it.

OK. I think that we are at the start of a new process. I certainly look forward to what comes out of that. I do not think there is much more we can kick this about at the moment.

Mr McMullan: Thank you for your presentation. I have just a few questions to ask because, as Cathal said, we have gone over the whole thing for long enough. We need to look at a fresh approach before anybody gathers up any more bins of information. In your presentation, you talked about a flexible approach and a unique project. Will you elaborate a wee bit on that?

Mr K Scott: Whilst the design and structure of many sports grounds are quite similar, there are differences in the demographics of people who turn up. You get differences in the configuration of the venue and the topographical and geographical situation. Some grounds have pitches that are beneath ground level. Some grounds are built into hillsides. Some grounds are within city centres, as your colleagues mentioned. The key bit of the 220-odd pages of the green guide is that it has to try to offer advice to a broad church and it has to involve all those things. There has to be an element of flexibility.

The other important point is that none of us is in a position of offering absolute safety. What we will give is our best shot, so it is about reasonableness. It is about understanding the likelihood of risk and whether the measures proposed are proportionate to the risk. It is very subjective and finely balanced. That is where we hope that our experience of being able to recall a tale of where and how things have been achieved at another venue could help the ongoing process.

Mr McMullan: On the back of what Cathal said, there have to be other examples that are similar to what we are talking about.

Mr K Scott: I cannot think of any offhand. That said, I would not suggest that you cannot find a solution. For many problems, the solution could be cash. I am not suggesting that that is the only solution, but I am not aware of any examples — certainly among my venues, and I believe that we have asked the question among colleagues — where there is such an imbalance in the positioning of exits. Not wanting to prejudge what will come forward as part of a new planning application in the new year or whenever, I very much look forward to seeing what those new plans are and what opportunity they present.

Mr McMullan: Have you had any discussions or contact with Belfast City Council?

Mr K Scott: Not on this project. From a former life, yes, I know one or two people who work there.

Mr McMullan: But not on this project.

Mr K Scott: Not on this project, no.

Mr McMullan: What is the crowd capacity, roughly, on a soccer pitch? What does a soccer pitch hold?

Mr K Scott: If you were to ask people to go onto a football pitch? I believe that the area of a FIFA football pitch — this is when I confirm my anorak status — is about 8,000 square metres. Guidance would suggest that you allow 0·5 square metres for each person, or a square metre for every two people. Eight thousand times two comes to 16,000. You could get more people in than that. You could use a factor of 0·25, which would be 4 people per square metre. That would be 32,000 people. The difficulty — this comes back to my concerns about density — is that with the best will in the world you will not get 6,000, 8,000, 10,000 or 30,000 people standing in regimented fashion. They all stand where they want to stand, and that is the crux of the problem: you have no control over where those people are. If everyone stood in regiments, fine; you could do what you are suggesting. The problem is density. It does not matter how big the expanse is. I think I went so far as to say that the size of the pitch is irrelevant to exiting. I will use an analogy that I have used when explaining this to people before. We are all quite comfortable in this room. There are probably 20 or 30 people in it, and we all have lots of space. However, if we all run for the door at the same time, one of us is likely to get hurt. That is an analogy for the problem.

Mr McMullan: This is a very simplistic way of looking at it, but would you expect most of the scenarios for emergency exiting to be discussed at the design stage, prior to any application for planning?

Mr K Scott: I would expect the design to reflect the requirements that are going to be placed upon the exiting. If the capacity is 38,000, I would accept, as your colleague, Mr Bradley, said earlier, that there might be elements of the contingency plan that you were quite happy to leave; but there should not be anything left behind that could require physical or structural alteration to the venue. That is why you need to look at this holistically. You need to look at what the design capacity is and whether that can be achieved. I agree that there will be some elements that can be done after the planning application has gone in. What you do not want is to reach a point where your planning application has gone in — perhaps this is not a good pun — the design is set in stone, and then you say, "We have looked at that, and it does not work. We need to do this, this and this, which would be a material alteration to the planning application".

The other element that we have not addressed yet is building regulations. They have to be fully embraced and locked into the development process, as Building Control will look at this. The guys from Belfast City Council will look at the overall design. They will have views under whatever the relevant section is in Northern Ireland. In England it is 'Approved Document B', which looks at fire strategy and emergency escape from the building. Again, in the interests of getting it right first time, it is important to get everyone together to remove any possible causes for concern.

Mr McMullan: Would it be strange for anybody involved in the project at that stage to come out, all of a sudden, with fears about the exiting strategy? Fears that the design could not cope with the numbers?

Mr K Scott: It would be the right and proper place. If there —

Mr McMullan: Before the application for planning.

Mr K Scott: Yes, I go back to what I said —

Mr McMullan: My question is this: would it be strange for somebody to bring up those fears after the application?

Mr K Scott: I cannot speculate on what the process has been. I will tell you how I would see it working best. It is exactly as I said earlier in the session. It would be a matter of all the key members getting together to discuss, so that there are no show-stoppers towards the end.

Mr McMullan: OK. The SGSA annual report of 2014 makes some mention of it. Why was the Casement Park project not mentioned in that annual report?

Ms Eyre-White: It was not mentioned. I was not in post at that time. We did not have any significant involvement in the Casement Park project.

Mr McMullan: Did you have none at all?

Ms Eyre-White: We did not have any significant involvement. As I set out, Ken and another colleague met colleagues from Sport Northern Ireland for a very short 30-minute meeting in 2014.

Mr McMullan: When did you become aware of the Casement Park project in a significant way?

Ms Eyre-White: Our significant involvement was probably when we were discussing the PAR report. There was an hour's meeting between Ken Scott and Rick Riding and the colleagues who were running that review. Before that, our awareness was peripheral, in that our inspectors were attending working groups that talked about general issues. Some Casement Park issues were mentioned at those meetings, but at no time have we seen detailed plans in relation to Casement Park.

Mr McMullan: On what date did you see the first detailed report?

Ms Eyre-White: We have not seen detailed plans.

Mr Hilditch: I had indicated that I wanted to come back in when Dominic was speaking about the Paris situation. The events in Saint Denis showed the benefits of a well-designed stadium and how it works to help people. That is where we are trying to get to. Today, it is good hear that many people want to move on. We have heard that lessons have been learned, but that does not take away from the difficulty that we have. We heard from the last member about a whistle-blower. He had to come to the Committee to at least take action. If he had not, this matter would not be getting address. That whistle-blower has been treated abominably, and the residents in that area have not been listened to either. We have a lot of stuff to do to get this report on the table and to get it right. Regardless of whether you have seen the designs, or whatnot, the fact is that an application was made to a council to approve a 38,000-seater stadium that was exiting onto a location that is served by one arterial route. I might be a safety officer in only a small and mediocre 5,000-seater stadium, but, to me, that is absolutely shocking. It is shocking to expose that to the public.

Mr McMullan: Just a point —

Mr Hilditch: Oliver is trying to rewrite history again.

Mr McMullan: Mr Hilditch said that the last member alluded to a whistle-blower. I did not allude to anybody, when I spoke.

Mr Hilditch: No, but you are questioning why people are coming during the process. The people on the STG got very well down the pecking order. They passed on —

Mr McMullan: Not during the process.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): Sorry, Oliver.

Mr Hilditch: They were not attending the strategic board meetings or anything like that.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): We will bring this —

Mr McMullan: This is a point of order. After the process, not during —

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): Yes, I know. I think that there are a lot of lessons to be learned in Northern Ireland, not just about the technical information that we have been given but procedural things. When somebody is on a safety technical group, representing an organisation, most people would expect them to be there all the time. So, attempts by some people to muddy the waters may be made, but I think that we will, very soon, get to a position where it is perfectly clear. I think we are nearly there. There are a few odds and ends, as Mr Ó hOisín said. We have had a lot of information; we are getting there.

I would like to raise one or two points, then I will bring Mr Humphrey in. On a technical point, in June 2015, we had folk with us, who were involved in the build and design of Casement. I came away from that with the impression that they were involved in, were consulted on and had a role in the shaping and updating of the green guide. Were you in the organisation, 10 years ago?

Mr K Scott: No, I was not at that time, Chair, but I can tell you the process that will be followed when I go forward with the revision for the sixth edition. It is very important to re-emphasise the point around Casement Park. It is about partnership, collaboration, seeking advice and distilling all the information that comes forward. So, the people involved — Populous Architects or HOK Sport, as it was around 2008 when the fifth edition was drafted — would have been consulted. The consultees to that would have come back with some points that one of my predecessors Jim Froggatt, who led the development of the fifth edition, would have taken on board. All the comments would have come back, and he would have looked at the ones that he felt were appropriate to be involved in the new production, and then he would have given good reason why some of them were not. Populous Architects, as one of the leading architects in the world in sports stadia development, would have been consulted and will be consulted on the design of the new sixth edition.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): OK. I think that brings some clarity to it. If we were doing a consultation here, you would send a document out for consultation to 300 or 500 organisations. You might have 1,000 responses. How many organisations or companies would be consulted?

Mr K Scott: I was not around at the time of the 2008 consultation process, but I have heard it quoted — and please do not quote me on it — that it was around 200 to 300 organisations.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): That would make sense. That brings some clarity to it. We get a sense that they were consulted along with 199 or whatever others. That may not have been the impression that some of us gained on the day.

Mr K Scott: It is important, and one of the things with the green guide is that it is not just a football-related document. I have read the green guide cover to cover a couple of times in the last couple of months because of the work that we will be doing — again, I am displaying the anorak tendency — but one thing that comes through is that there are some terms used in there that are quite specific to soccer. One of my dearest wishes when we move forward with the sixth edition is that we make sure that it is fully embraced by the GAA, cricket, rugby, soccer and any other sport, and what we need to do is to flatten out any of those things that point to or reference a particular association or sport.

It not only gives good guidance around the venues that require a certificate through designation but applies to the people who play in the park on a Sunday afternoon. The guidance in it is applicable at all levels. Some of the guidance has a different focus or status because of the fact that the venue is designated and requires a safety certificate. Therefore, you can lift things out of it and then take it out of the guidance and lift it up to the position of law, but if you are running a small Gaelic football venue, you will get good advice in here.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): Thank you. I have two very quick points. The green guide talks about a zone 5 — I am having to look at my notes to make sure that I get it right — which is a buffer zone outside the sports ground perimeter. In the case of Casement Park, the ground comes right up to the pavement. We walked around it, and it is really out onto the street. So, you have the pavement and the road. How do you view the public highway, therefore, as a zone 5? Is a zone 5 meant to be a space that is not the street or the road?

Mr K Scott: The principle of a zone 5 is that it is an outer area that will allow people to gather before the event and to say goodbye at the end of an event because one person is going one way and one person is going the other. It would be an area where there is complete safety from moving traffic.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): So, it could not be the Andersonstown Road, for example, or any road.

Mr K Scott: Forgive me, I have not been there, but not unless there were measures in place that meant that that was a sterile area that prevented the movement of traffic.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): So, no traffic.

Mr K Scott: There is an option to do it. That is where the flexibility comes in. I would not like to give a categoric answer that it can or cannot. I think that it needs to be looked at in its entirety.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): If, for example, you were to close it off from traffic that day so that people could wander around on the road and chat to their friends or whatever, you could then —

Mr K Scott: And many soccer grounds in England do that. They have temporary traffic orders outside, at the time of the match between certain hours, to accommodate the start or the end. You have to understand what the issues are and work around them, being flexible.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): The green guide also refers to zone 4 as the "outer circulation area" and zone 3 as "internal concourses". Would it be in order to combine zones 3 and 4 in some way, or are they to be looked at separately?

Mr K Scott: Zone 1, in the green guide, is the pitch area; zone 2 is the viewing accommodation; zone 3 is the internal concourses; and zone 4 is the area immediately outside the turnstiles or exits. Zone 5 is, if you like, this wider breathing space, where people can arrive. It could include the car parks, which would be carefully managed on a match day. The red guide, if I am correct, has the pitch as zone 1, and I believe it combines zones 2 and 3, which are the viewing accommodation and the concourse area. Zone 4, in the red guide, is the outer exclusion area.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): So you could combine zones 2 and 3 in the red guide. Can you combine zones 3 and 4?

Mr K Scott: No, that would be extremely difficult; but again, I am always open for a challenge and I would like to see a plan that did that.

Mr McCausland: I draw on the fact that you will know a lot more about it than we will.

Mr Humphrey: Karen, I want to ask you about your response to a question in relation to the conference call that Mr Ó hOisín put to Mr Scott. You seemed to know more about the conference call than Ken did. What do you know about the conference call, and when was it held?

Ms Eyre-White: Can I just ask which conference call you refer to?

Mr Humphrey: The one which Mr Ó hOisín referred to. This Committee is not aware of any —

Ms Eyre-White: There was a conference in May, which was, I understand, organised by the GAA health and safety committee. One of our inspectors spoke at that conference.

Mr Humphrey: In May of what year?

Ms Eyre-White: It was in May 2014. There was a conference call as part of our contribution to the PAR report, and it was a telephone —

Mr Humphrey: Was it in May 2014 as well?

Ms Eyre-White: No. It was in June 2015.

Mr Humphrey: Good. Thanks for establishing that, because, I have to say, Mr Murphy and his colleagues were in front of this Committee on 25 June. I made reference to it earlier. There was no mention made of conference calls or whatever.

Mr K Scott: Just for clarity, I think we might be getting confused.

Mr Humphrey: It is for clarity that I ask the question.

Mr K Scott: OK. The involvement that we have had with the GAA, I have written down here. On 24 March 2007, we delivered a safety management and accessible stadia seminar in Armagh. On 9 and 10 May 2014, there was a safety management contingency planning event for the GAA at Croke Park, that involved two guys, Pat Cahill and Tony McGuinness. I am not sure who they are, but, I guess that they are connected with the GAA. On the 21 September 2014, as I declared, I and two colleagues attended the Croke Park GAA final between Kerry and Dublin.

Mr Humphrey: So, the GAA was quite content to seek advice from the Sports Grounds Safety Authority on issues outside of this jurisdiction, but not in relation to the development of the new ground at Casement Park. I think that that is new evidence for this Committee, and it is something which we need to reflect on. That completely flies in the face of the evidence Mr Murphy gave to the Committee in June in the answer to a question.

I want to say this when Mr Ken Scott is here, because there has been considerable reference made throughout this entire process to Paul Scott. This Committee, the Northern Ireland Executive, the taxpayer of Northern Ireland and GAA fans owe Mr Paul Scott a huge debt of gratitude because, had he not done what he did — the responsible thing to do — we would have had a huge expenditure of Northern Ireland taxpayers' money on a project that would have been rendered a white elephant because the council would have moved in to restrict the capacity of that stadium, had it been built. So, instead of Mr Paul Scott being vilified and attacked by folk, he should be congratulated for what he did, because it has saved the taxpayer of Northern Ireland millions of pounds, and, potentially, catastrophe has been averted. I just wanted to put that on record.

Mr Ó hOisín: The conference discussed is actually referred to in the SGSA's annual report of 2014. That is where that is from.

I am glad, in fairness, Ken, that you alluded to the fact that the green guide was written almost specifically for soccer grounds and that there is terminology within it referring specifically to soccer. That is an issue that I brought up previously, not only in terms of size —

Mr K Scott: That was not the intention, that is how —

Mr Ó hOisín: I understand that. Obviously, there is some GAA played in Britain but not a lot. Having said that, that is where it came from, and you gave us your estimate that 8,000 people could be accommodated on a soccer pitch.

Mr K Scott: A soccer pitch is 8,000 square metres, using FIFA standards.

Mr Ó hOisín: Yes, it is one square metre per person.

Mr K Scott: So, if you used a factor of 0·5, that would be 16,000.

Mr Ó hOisín: The figure given to us for potential use of the pitch at Casement was 54,000, and then 38,000 for the concourse.

Mr K Scott: Sorry, the floor area of a Gaelic pitch is about 13,000 square metres, so that would be applying a factor of about 0·25; four times thirteen is about 52,000.

Mr Ó hOisín: Can I just say that there is also a difference in crowd dynamics? You will obviously have seen that. You went to the football final; I always go to the hurling final. I was at that hurling final in 2013, when it was Cork and Clare. I went to the replay, and there were 82,500 at both matches. There is a different crowd dynamic in GAA, in that there is no segregation. Fans sit among each other. That has an impact. I just want to put that on record.

The other example that I want you to look at, because you say you do not have experience of people exiting from a single exit site, is the Aviva Stadium in Dublin, which has that feature. I think that that has not been considered previously and it should be.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): Thank you very much indeed, Karen and Ken. We are very appreciative of your information today, and it has been a fairly extensive session. It is very important and helpful to the work that we are undertaking. I think that there are, as I said earlier, two aspects. There is the technical side of it, which is for you and our colleagues here, such as Paul Scott. You are the folks who really understand that extremely well, and we are grateful for that. There are also procedural things that I think we need to look at, as to how major projects like this are handled by government. There are big lessons to be learnt there. Hopefully, some of the lessons that we learn here may be reflected elsewhere. We do not want to make these mistakes again. Thank you very much.

Mr K Scott: Thank you for listening to us.

Ms Eyre-White: Thank you.