Sinead O'Carroll

THE GAELIC ATHLETIC Association sells itself on exceptionalism. 

Its value system is built on not being like anyone else. It’s amateur; not grubby like all those other sports that care about profits. It’s pure; the players go to war on Sundays and then put on a suit on Monday morning to go earn a crust for the family. Its army of volunteers unmatched; creating a place ‘where we all belong’ in a community that ‘includes everyone’. (Both taglines from GAA media and advertising campaigns.) 

That exceptionalism is a nice story, but one that was exposed as more fairytale than fact this week by a former President of Ireland. 

GAA director general Tom Ryan dropped the act when he delivered a letter to Mary McAleese on Monday. And in the subsequent hours, current president Jarlath Burns forgot that his organisation sells itself primarily not as a professional sport of elite athletes but a community behemoth which puts all other passions to shame. 

The pair couldn’t quite get their story straight on why they obliterated plans for integration with the Camogie Association (CA) and the Ladies Gaelic Football Association (LGFA) this week, leading people to question whether the association’s grip on the lionshare of power and money within Gaelic games was central to their change of heart. 

As McAleese opened that letter as chair of the Steering Group on Integration, she believed the job she undertook on request of the GAA would be finished next year. However, what she was then reading was the “GAA’s revised position on integration”. 

“We now need to build on the impressive work to date and derive a clear, detailed and phased plan over the next 5 years to achieve it,” Ryan wrote. 

So, does he mean 2031? No. He goes on to say: 

“The key message is that we are committed to moving the process forward but cannot commit to a definitive timeline at this stage.”

McAleese, rightly, was confused. The GAA had been given a mandate by its members (with a 90% vote in 2022) to make integration a priority. How were a few people at the top dictating an extreme change in policy – and trying to do it quietly and unilaterally? 

The GAA is used to politicians kowtowing to them and their stranglehold on much of Ireland’s voting public. The GAA is also accustomed to being able to dictate terms to the LGFA and the CA. 

So uncharacteristically, Ryan and Burns were caught on the hop by McAleese going public so quickly and so loudly. They hadn’t quite sorted out their messaging on Crisis Day 1, therefore revealing some sort of truth to the rest of us.

On a Morning Ireland pre-recorded interview, Ryan attributed the delay to not being able to get “the structures” right. What do we mean by structures? Short answer: the jobs. Where the power lies. Boards and councils around the country need delegates and officers. They are not paid jobs but roles that come with a bit of say at county and provincial level. 

Burns, just hours later, on RTÉ News at One contradicted that slightly by saying the structures piece was almost ready, but the real problem was in the books. The GAA simply couldn’t afford women. 

To be clear, the GAA doesn’t have a problem with all women. It loves female volunteers, ticket buyers and adult non-playing members. Without them, how could they continue to attract AIB, Centra, SuperValu and Allianz with wholesome campaigns about being built for and of the community? The argument is mightily less compelling if 50% of that story disappears. How could they continue to win millions of euros of State funding each year if they couldn’t point to a woman or girl here and there?

Burns and Ryan know this. When they were bluffing about their enthusiasm for integration they spoke of unstoppable commercial opportunities and vibrant clubs from Malin to Mizen Head. 

(Separately, there are hundreds of clubs that are fully integrated and whose members – male and female – display exactly the kind of leadership required to make it work every day with limited resources and great pressure to succeed. The discussion this week is dictated by the laggards.) 

But the people at the crux of integration are a specific type of woman. They are female players. They are the women that the GAA now says it cannot find room for in its structures or on its books. And another related group too: the administrators (male and female) who protect and develop the codes of ladies football and camogie.

Why the U-turn now?

Quite simply, nobody likes giving up stuff.

Similar to many of us who want to reverse climate action but can’t quite bring ourselves to decrease air miles, cut down on petrol use, stop buying stuff we don’t need or even just to use the correct recycling bin.  

It sounds great, but maybe it’s too idealistic. Not even too hard, just less pleasant. Easter is more fondly thought of than Lent. 

The president, the director general, the silent male players can continue to believe they definitely want equality because sure don’t they have daughters and nieces. But their moves on Monday – and the negative campaigning in media before then – was an effort to remove a timeline for progress. With no pressure to change, they could continue to have their cake and eat it. 

Take no action. Upset no county board chair. Leave intact the treasurers’ Excel sheets. Annoy no male player with new pitch timetables or a slightly reduced budget for their GPS trackers and special training kit. But, crucially, maintain the myth of ‘where we all belong’. 

Why do they believe they can’t get ‘the structures’ right? Because they’d have to reconstitute boards and councils to ensure those seats at the tables for LGFA and camogie administrators to ensure a more equal GAA. 

The money and access to facilities are self-explanatory. The GAA wants to sell an organisation of community which includes men and women, and particularly boys and girls, but they want to be able to dictate what facilities get used and how; who decision-making boards are made up of; and most importantly how the money gets divvied up across counties and teams. Changing the decision-making structures makes it harder to keep the status quo. Making equality a policy might require action they don’t want to take. 

The charade of exceptional amateurism must continue to the tune of €45 million per year. No compromises. No sharing. And certainly no strategic priority to build upon the already strong foundations of camogie and ladies football to strengthen the entire movement. 

When mandates and membership votes are ignored or allowed to drift, the personnel at the top have control. That is bad governance. And it makes a lottery of progress. 

Unfortunately for integration, Derek Kent, who takes over as president in February 2027, has been even more strident in his dismissal of integration. 

In February this year, he told The Irish Sun, “I don’t see integration really coming any sooner than our 150th anniversary (2034), and that’s just a symbolic target. It mightn’t happen then, but that’s what I’m saying.” 

Recap of the week

So on Monday, Tom Ryan said no integration in 2027 and probably not in 2031. Kent, who was elected with ease to the top job, has said most definitely not by 2034. 

But by Wednesday, the top brass told the Minister for Sport Patrick O’Donovan that 2027 was possible again. 

“I asked Ard Stiúrthóir of the GAA, Tom Ryan, yesterday, if during the year 2027, will we have a design of a legal structure that can be put to the three Congresses to be voted on? He said, yes, he was confident of that,” O’Donovan said on air. 

What happened in that room that led to such a miraculous about-face by the director general? 

How come on Monday integration this decade was deemed impossible by the greatest minds of the GAA but by Wednesday evening, Jarlath Burns without a hint of contrition was telling us there was no crisis and nothing had changed? But also insisting he still didn’t want to talk timelines. 

The Minister says he trusts the GAA on his 2027 deadline despite the flip-flopping, contradictions and subterfuge. Why?

There may be a clue in how the GAA refuted the allegations of misogyny made by McAleese. 

On that Wednesday morning radio outing, sports presenter Des Cahill softballed a question to Ryan about how many women were on the management committee (An Coiste Bainistíochta) of the GAA. Nine of 19, he replied smugly, echoing many tweets and column inches from media commentators and journalists friendly with the GAA hierarchy in the last few days which made it a loud talking point. 

What might not have been clear to readers or listeners is how and when that number came to be. In 2016, there were precisely zero women on that committee when talk of mandated quotas of 30% representation or lose funding came from the government. 

Words like “grossly unfair” were thrown around by GAA officials at the time. 

In December 2023, seven years later, that number had increased to just three. It was only when the funding threats were actually serious – and therefore taken seriously – that the ratio meant the 40% requirement was met (which some stacking of people required; journalist Cliona Foley has a detailed history here of the finer details for anyone interested). 

Maybe the GAA would have got there by themselves or maybe money was paramount. But who was the junior minister who first proposed such an unpopular but effective quotas-or-money policy?

Patrick O’Donovan. 

So did the impossible become possible on Wednesday evening because the vast sums of taxpayers’ money received by the GAA were put on the table by the same man?

Or are the GAA stringing him along like they have the Camogie Association, LGFA and McAleese for the past four years?

O’Donovan is always willing to kick the FAI and threaten them with bankruptcy but the GAA is a different beast. The myth has persisted. The exceptionalism of amateurism and ordinary-people-first has been sold far too successfully for far too long. 

There is now a different power struggle to be played out. 

O’Donovan said 2027 has to happen (although with the technicalities of votes, that may become January 2028). Burns, Ryan and Kent have made it clear it has never been, and will never be, top of their agenda. 

Will Burns have to pass on an unsavoury message to Kent? The man is serious and if you don’t do it on your watch, protecting that €45 million and the male playing population will become as difficult as climate action. Or will they attempt to blow past another deadline with a insincere mea culpa? 

The only thing we know for sure is that the female players are still waiting. They know where they belong but, right now, they still aren’t welcome. Money might be the only thing to change that. 

Sinéad O’Carroll is the editor of The Journal and a former club camogie player.