For those not familiar with the situation, Gaelic games are split into three organisations:
- The main GAA
- The Ladies Gaelic Football Association
- Camogie (the female version of hurling)
For years they have been trying to merge the three organisations into the main GAA and they put the formidable ex-president Mary McAleese in charge of the campaign. But after four years she has thrown her hands up and walked out, blaming the GAA’s management for the situation. From the Irish Times:
McAleese says she does not believe integration of the GAA, LGFA and Camogie Association will happen under the current GAA leadership.
“Probably not under the current management, I’d have to say,” she told RTÉ Radio 1’s Inside Sport programme on Tuesday evening.
McAleese was appointed independent chairperson of the Steering Group on Integration (SGI) in September 2022. In February 2024, a timeline for full integration in 2027 was announced at a press conference in Croke Park at which McAleese and the leadership of all three organisations were present.
And while McAleese had remained steadfast in her belief the timeline would be met for April 2027, there had been reservations expressed by some of the parties involved, and the GAA had indicated privately they did not believe it was possible to bring the organisations under the one umbrella by that date.
The GAA then wrote to the SGI on Monday formally seeking to pause the process and push out the target date by possibly up to five years. The correspondence proved one obstacle too many for McAleese.
And with her departure, so too goes the 2027 aspiration. It will not now be met.
“I’m absolutely devastated,” she stated. “I’ve given four years of my time to this and four years is a lot.”
McAleese believes the “momentum has faded” for integration within Croke Park and delivered a damning perspective of the GAA top brass.
“I did meet the management committee, and a body, quite frankly, that was less than impressive and very disappointing to me as a long-term GAA supporter to meet a body so lacking in vision for the future of the GAA.
“But it boils down to, in their view, finances, which incidentally we had taken great trouble to meet their concerns [about] and to have answers for their concerns that were more than credible and more than workable.
“But I also suspect, and 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.”
The three fs of finance, facilities and fixtures have been big sticking points in the discussions but McAleese says progress had been made on those fronts.
“They’ve blocked our progress, they’ve blocked our plan and they have no other plan currently.
“I was shocked to hear the current president of the GAA [Jarlath Burns] say [in correspondence] that, in fact, he didn’t really support the idea, having supported it up to now at all our meetings, but that he was in favour of federation.
“Honestly, somewhere in recent months, the leadership is not evident and the commitment to integration has evaporated, in my view.”
On the impact of the fallout, she added: “I’m broken hearted for the players, and in particular I’m broken hearted for the parents of young girls.
“I think of my own daughter who is up to her ears in the local GAA, and the women who have given so much to the GAA, who will see this rightly, in my view, as a slap in the face.”
GAA President Jarlath Burns has came out on the defensive, from the Journal:
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”.
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.
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.”
So is it really all about the money or is it more about the boys wanting to keep all the power for themselves? As the most successful sporting organisation in Ireland, the GAA is not short of a few bob so it’s hard to see that money is the real issue.
Jarlath Burns is a smooth operator who is often tipped as a future president of Ireland himself but pissing off someone of the stature and reputation of Mary McAleese has to be seen is a major blunder.
Managing Editor of Slugger O’Toole. I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism; I am not a member of any political party. When not stuck in front of a screen, I am a parkrun Run Director.
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