GAA's commitment to integration remains 'firm and absolute' - Tom Ryan

LAST UPDATE | 1 hr ago

THE HEAD OF the GAA has described comments made by Dr Mary McAleese, following her resignation as chair of the body tasked to bring about integration, as “regrettable” and “offensive”.

Jarlath Burns took particular issue with Dr McAleese’s remarks about gender issues and the role of women in the GAA, claiming the facts abut gender balance within the organisation are “completely different”.

McAleese on Tuesday resigned from her position as chair of the Integration Committee overseeing the amalgamation of the GAA, LGFA and Camogie Association, when it became clear the process would not be complete in 2027, as planned.

The former President of Ireland delivered a stunning critique of GAA management as she accused senior figures of not wanting women making decisions at the top level of Gaelic games.

“The GAA management committee was quite frankly less than impressive, and very disappointing to me as a long term GAA supporter to meet a body that was so lacking in vision for the future of the GAA,” said McAleese.

“I hate to say this but I suspect that there are people who are not entirely happy about the idea of including women in decision-making at the top level of Gaelic sports.” 

Meeting with sport Minister

Minister for Sport Patrick O’Donovan today met with Burns as well as McAleese and representatives of the three bodies to discuss progress towards integration.

Speaking afterwards, O’Donovan declined to “get into who is right and wrong”, adding that he had had “very positive discussions” with all.

He said it was “disappointing” that McAleese “found herself in the position where she had no other option but to resign” but they agreed “some good” will come out of it because the issue of integration is now a top line story.

O’Donovan added that all three associations said there are “very committed to full integration under the name of the Gaelic Athletic Association”.

He added: “They’re now going forward to the next meeting of their steering group in early October, and hopefully they will be in a position after that to come back to both myself and Sport Ireland with regard to implementation plans.”

O’Donovan said he offered assistance through Sport Ireland.

‘Regrettable’

Earlier, Burns told RTÉ’s News At One that the stalling of the full integration is because of financial concerns.

He also said there was a “legitimate fear” that integration could have been voted against at GAA congress if issues about membership and structures were not set out.

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He said: “I’m very disappointed about the resignation of Dr McAleese. She’s somebody I have immense respect for. I thought it was wonderful that we had her as chair.

“I thought she did well. I felt that some of the comments which she made yesterday were very regrettable, particularly about the gender issue and about the role of women, because under my presidency we have moved to a 40% gender quota.

“It’s actually gone up to nine out of 19, which is also a 50% female representation on the GAA’s management committee, which is the highest committee in the GAA.

“So, it is disappointing that she made those remarks about the role of women at the highest level in the GAA, considering the facts are actually completely different.

“I just hope that, in the fullness of time, Dr McAleese will reflect on that part of her remarks yesterday and maybe clarify them because it is quite offensive to the people who are on that committee.”

When asked to clarify the GAA’s position that it wants to focus on equity rather than equality in its integration process, he said: “What that means is, it’s mainly at the high performance level, not at club level, not at national level. It’s the high performance county level.

“We actually have a poor record in the GAA of controlling expenditure currently. If we go straight into equality, the €45 million that we currently spend preparing county teams goes to €90 million. We just simply cannot sustain that.”

Asked whether the GAA was worried that integration would mean that far greater resources would have to be allocated to women’s inter-county teams, Burns said: “Probably, in a nutshell, yes, that’s it.

“We just don’t have the resources currently to be able to provide for that.

“That is not to say that at a later stage, you know, if we were in a situation where we were having similar crowds going to female games as male games that we couldn’t get there.”

‘Just not ready’

Burns’s remarks followed Tom Ryan, the GAA’s director general, commenting that the association is “just not ready” to amalgamate with the LGFA and Camogie Association by 2027, adding that the deadline for integration is “too ambitious”.

He said the GAA’s commitment to integration remains “firm and absolute” and refuted accusations of misogyny “in the strongest possible terms”.

Speaking to Des Cahill on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland this morning, Ryan said there had been a planned Special Congress in October to launch the 2027 integration.

He said that the deadlines set and agreed by the GAA were too ambitious, and the organisation needed more time to see certain aspects of the administrative process through.

“We recognised, we’re just not ready to do that,” Ryan said.

“We’ve missed a deadline, it’s our own deadline that we have missed. In hindsight, I think what we were aiming for proved just a little bit too ambitious so we just need to refocus really, recast our plans.

He added: “Above all, our commitment remains firm and absolute.

“But there were a couple of specific things that we needed to get approval for at this juncture, and they were going to be tricky.

“First we have proposals around the common membership, reciprocation across the three organisations, that’s universal membership fees, membership systems and so on.

“The second part was the organisation structures from the club level up to the national governing body.

“The membership piece is ready. The structures piece is not.”

Asked if the GAA was now less committed to integration, Ryan said: “No, I can answer that absolutely. The commitment remains firm and absolute.

“I don’t see a future for us as a standalone organisation, promoting and offering male sports only. Our future is together.

“We will be far stronger as a combined organisation. I believe that. The GAA believes that. I know my colleagues in ladies football and camogie believe that.

“All we are looking at here is we’ve missed a deadline, our own deadline. Our job now is to just recast things in light of that, to learn from that and push ahead.”

Phased implementation

Ryan said he could not offer “a precise timetable” to when integration would take place. He said he could envisage having the structures proposals, which he earlier cited as a key part in the delay, ready next year.

“A key element will be a phased implementation, not a single big bang,” Ryan said.

Asked to respond to accusations of misogyny which have been voiced in the public debate round the issue, Ryan said, “I can’t accept that”.

He added: “I would refute that in the strongest possible terms. I accept in the course of a project like this there will be different perspectives, and different points of view and that’s fine, but I can’t accept that as a charge.”

Ryan said upwards of 30% of club executives were female and upwards of 30% of clubs have adopted the One Club model – where all codes are promoted equally.

Updated at 10.28pm