+34The GAA integration process faces scrutiny over funding and equality as Mary McAleese resignation and Tom Ryan comments highlight a phased approach with a framework motion possibly in 2027.
The GAA integration process is facing renewed scrutiny over funding and equality, with Mary McAleese's resignation potentially accelerating the timeline. Minister Patrick O'Donovan said he had received a strong indication from GAA Director General Tom Ryan that a framework motion would go before all three sporting organisations in 2027.
Twenty-four hours earlier, Ryan admitted he could not put a timeline on the process. He stressed a phased implementation rather than a single big bang. In a letter last Monday to the integration committee, which almost certainly triggered McAleese's departure, Ryan framed the challenge that remained. The three associations come to integration from different starting points, with different structures, resources, capacities and challenges, Ryan wrote.
Recognising those differences is important if integration is to deliver fair and sustainable outcomes. He insisted there would be no shortcut to delivering those fair and sustainable outcomes. If truth is the first casualty of war, mathematics tends to be the first casualty of mergers. This week, Burns asserted that equality could extend to inter-county preparation costs going from 45 million euro to 90 million euro in an integrated body.
GPA CEO Tom Parsons counted just 4.5 million euro in extra costs. There was an inescapable sense of Burns scribbling out a number on the back of an envelope with a sum of convenience. The beauty for a lobbying body like the GPA is that the numbers they magic up are likely to bear little relevance to the one which county board treasurers will not only calculate, but will also have to find the dosh to pay.
The figure arrived at by the steering committee is the one that mattered most. It estimated an increased cost of 11.5 million euro in team preparation costs. Mileage was expected to double from 7 million euro to 14 million euro, with county boards incurring 12 million euro of that cost. Based on last year's figures, had integration been delivered instantly, inter-county spending would rise to an eye-watering 58 million euro.
In an association where the inability to curtail team preparation costs remains the biggest challenge, adding to that without having access to any meaningful increased sources of revenue is a core issue for the lack of appetite at county board level for integration. When equality is measured by the outside world, not least the political one, the tape is set on where the money goes and to whom.
The other big stumbling block, as articulated by Ryan, has been the structural framework of a merged organisation, but therein lies the key to unlocking this process. Perhaps the best pathway to integration is to park it for now and go for a model that is more pragmatic and deliverable. Instead of an integrated body, a federal one offers the space to deliver change that can bring meaningful improvements to the LGFA and Camogie, without asking.
As the battle for the minds and hearts for an integrated Gaelic Games family raged on the national airwaves on Wednesday afternoon, the GAA found an ally it could have done without. With Mary McAleese's parting shot alleging an element within the GAA's leadership did not want women in decision-making positions still hanging heavy in the air, Tom reached for the phone to ring Cormac O hEadhra, in as a sub for Kieran Cuddihy, on RTE Radio 1's Liveline to set the record straight.
Tom was not surprised by any of it. The women now wanted the training pitch where the lads gathered on an evening to get a bit of badly needed exercise and enjoy some male bonding. Open the training pitch gate, and Tom reckoned that the women would not be happy unless they were allowed to play on the morning of the All-Ireland final, before the men got out on the field to play in theirs.
When O hEadhra suggested that Tom's argument may have long passed the bus stop called paranoia, the presenter was warned not to be wishing for what he might get. It would be only a matter of time before a woman would be wheeled into the Liveline studio to take his job, warned Tom before taking his leave, presumably for a dance at de Valera's crossroads.
Given the paucity of support for its embattled leadership in Croke Park, there were some who may have confused Tom for the voice of the GAA's unreasonableness which had stalled the integration process. The majority, most likely, were just confused like all of us, including, it would appear, those at the very heart of it. What we are certain of is that this is a mess that has been four years in the making.
Perhaps that is not a failure of the process, but a reflection on the seismic challenge faced in integrating three out of five of the biggest sporting organisations in the country. The late Liam O'Neill's assertion that had the GAA been founded today rather than in 1884, it would have come fully integrated with bells and whistles, is an obvious truth.
But that does not mean that as night follows day, the obvious response is that what time cheated the Gaelic Games family out of can be wished or even negotiated into place. That is a penny that has surely dropped painfully over the past four years. That is not to say that it will not happen. McAleese's resignation may well be the catalyst for that process to accelerate.
A week might be a long time in politics, but a day passes in the blink of an eye when the need is greatest. But no matter how much urgency accelerates the process, the issues and concerns that stall it will remain. It begs the obvious question: can you truly deliver integration without equality? There are so many elements to integration, not least the part that has already proved to work in almost 800 clubs, the one unit model.
But where the measuring tape for equality will be most obviously set is in funding at inter-county level. If you want to distil Ryan's words down to a simple line, it is that when integration is delivered, equality will not be a guaranteed central element.
GAA Integration Joined Up Thinking Ladies Football GAA Integration Funding Equality Mary Mcaleese Tom Ryan
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