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COURIER OPINION: Lessons must be learned from Dundee’s Olympia pool scandal

It's more than a year since the Olympia pool in Dundee closed and the public are still frustratingly short of answers to what has gone wrong.

exterior of Olympia pool, Dundee.
The Olympia pools were closed for more than two years. Image: Kim Cessford/DC Thomson

It has been well over a year since issues at Dundee’s Olympia leisure centre first came to light.

And while there has been a lot of talk in that time, tangible progress towards the venue’s reopening has been less obvious.

No matter how you look at it, the Olympia fiasco is a lesson which is being learned the hard way.

And not just by the thousands of swimmers being denied a leisurely dip or the opportunity to train at their local pool.

General view of the Olympia in Dundee
The Olympia pool in Dundee has been closed since October 2021.

At a time of incredible pressure on public finances, millions of pounds of taxpayers’ cash is having to be spent on refurbishing a centre, which should have had a very much longer operational lifespan than Olympia did.

At the very least, what this debacle demands is complete openness about what has occurred, how the problems manifested themselves in the first place and how the damage is to be righted.

Conservative MSP Maurice Golden believes the full circumstances are yet to be shared and has called on the council to order an independent report into the scandal.

Some might see that as nothing more than a naked attempt at political point-scoring.

But public confidence has been dented by Olympia and anything that can help to restore it should be considered.

The lessons of this scandal must be learned.

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