It's been a busy few weeks for those following the debate over the national stadium plans for the Maze.

A matter of a couple of weeks before Peter Robinson is due to make his 'recommendation' to the Executive over the Maze plans, it has emerged John Sweeney, the Permanent Secretary of DCAL ( the deparment headed by Edwin Poots, the Maze's head cheerleader - nothing to do with the fact that the Maze is practically in his back garden of course), has refused to endorse DCAL's assessment of the plans. A senior civil servant is quoted as saying the Maze proposal "doesn't stack up" and that adding the extra 8,500 seats to the original 30,000 doubled the expected costs.

This comes only a couple of weeks after a report identified no less than 5 potential sites for a stadium in Belfast that it says are "better suited" to hosting a large sports stadium.

Those potential sites are Maysfield Leisure Centre, Ormeau Park and the North Foreshore (nothing new there) as well as relative newcomer Danny Blanchflower and, out of nowhere, Boucher Road playing fields.

The week before that, the Amalgamation of Northern Ireland Supporters Clubs released a highly critical response to the PwC business case for the Maze, which was finally released at the start of this year after what seemed like years of waiting.