Comprehensive Croke Park Sustainability Report published

By Cian O'Connell

'Winning the Breaking Ball', Croke Park’s first comprehensive Annual Sustainability Report was published on Monday.

The comprehensive document illustrates how Croke Park is responding to the complex sustainability challenges facing the sports, events, and hospitality sector.

Spanning environmental, social and governance themes, it highlights the actions delivered to date and the practical steps being taken in a number of areas.

Colin O'Brien, Sustainability Manager at Croke Park, outlines the reasoning for this initiative. "We've been reporting on a smaller scale over the past few years," he explains.

"We'd do maybe two pages of our key highlights. We'd a discussion on how we'd expand, how we'd report, be more transparent, and tell our story in greater detail.

"Off the back of the CSRD - Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive - that we were originally going to fall under, we did a lot of work and preparation for reporting at a more comprehensive level.

"As part of that, we did a lot of stakeholder engagement, really looking into all of our data points when it comes to energy, water, waste, community, travel and transport. We did more comprehensive work on our carbon footprint.

"The CSRD changed, the reporting requirements changed, and we fell out of that scope.

"We'd actually done all of the hard work for the CSRD reporting. So, as we'd the hard work done, we said let's just report anyway, to tell our story about the work we've done.

"A lot of organisations were in that position, too. Putting in the hard work getting ready for CSRD and then being told you don't have to report under CSRD anymore. We'd the information gathered and the stakeholder engagement done. So, we wanted to report comprehensively."

O'Brien is encouraged by the positive response. "The feedback so far has been great, it only launched yesterday (Monday), but we've been inundated with great feedback and requests from people to talk about it further," he says.

"There is a lot of pressure being put on large organisations and large venues to not just reduce their carbon footprint, but to be transparent about what they're doing. You tell the story, this is the situation we're in and this is how we hope to improve our carbon footprint, this is what we're doing for local communities and society."

O'Brien is keen to raise awareness about this area and that further developments will follow. "Big organisations like Croke Park and the GAA have to lead by example," he says.

"Hopefully, we can inspire others to do the same, to bring others on the journey with us, to help educate people, who maybe don't have the resources that we have.

"I think just being who we are and the size of the venue, that we've to lead from the front, do the right thing, and show responsibility.

"Hopefully, other venues will follow suit and want to do the same. That is what it is all about."

Trying to implement change isn't always easy, but O'Brien finds his current role extremely interesting and wide ranging. "It is, I'm heavily involved in the operations department," he says.

"So, being involved in operations and sustainability, it is the perfect crossover really. You've a direct involvement in energy management water management, and waste management in implementing policies, procedures, and practices to reduce your usage in all of those areas.

"I've first hand oversight of all these areas and responsibility for implementing these measures. Again, it is a perfect crossover, I'm heavily involved in the event management side of things, facility management side of things.

"It is a perfect role, very cross functional. It is a perfect opportunity to put measures in place to get change."

You can view the Croke Park Sustainability Report 2025 here.