“2027 is not a target, it is the date by which integration will be completed.”
The bold statement was said at the top table by Hilda Breslin but it was one that did not cause any of her colleagues to blink and it was one that laid down a firm marker on what former President Mary McAleese said was “a historic day for Gaelic Games.”
When she announced on Patrick Kielty’s first Late Late Show last September that a pathway would be published towards integration in February, there was a collective raising of eyebrows wondering whether that was possible or how detailed that might be.
Today was proof that it is and an indicator of how detailed the process will be over the next three years.
Hilda Breslin, President of the Camogie Association, Micheál Naughton, President of the LGFA and Larry McCarthy, President for a few more days of the GAA were seated at the front of a room that perhaps expected a softer, maybe fuzzier roadmap. That was not the plan.
“We have spect 18 months engaged in hard listening,” said McAleese. We have had survey results from 30,000 members across the three Associations and we have seen 90 per cent in favour of integration at each of the three Congresses to which a motion to proceed was put.”
I made the point from the floor that this number was as close to unanimous as any functioning democracy would generally allow for and asked what the hardest nut to crack would be in turning that desire into a reality.
Of course there is rarely a single nut, especially in an area as complex but the Chair of the Steering Group gave an emphatic answer that it was the three F’s of Facilities, Fixtures and Funding that exercised most of the many who had been part of the consultation process.
An audit is underway on the quantity and quality of the facilities that each code has access to and this would form the basis of a clear understanding of both what there is and what is needed.
Ireland’s population is growing rapidly but it’s land mass is not. Urban and rural areas will have different solutions to providing the required number of space to play but it was heartening that this discussion with Government is based on the premise of creating space for all sport.
The days of the parish field being sacrosanct for one sport and one sport only is ebbing like a tide.
McAleese spoke of her first act on being asked to Chair the group being a visit to the cottage in County Clare where Michael Cusack was born in 1847, Black ’47, the worst year of the famine. From such an inauspicious start to life he went on to found the Gaelic Athletic Association and build probably the world’s most successful volunteer sporting body, one that is woven into every aspect of our society ever since.
Integration is a prosaic piece of work but a little poetry never goes astray in helping it along.
Would he have founded an organisation only for men if he were doing it all over again in the modern era? Clearly not and that is what integration now has to deliver.
The winning post has been planted in the ground though the detail of how we will all get there is being held a little closer.
We are assured that a very detailed plan is in place which will, by 2027 deliver a single Congress and a single President but with a likely remaining three conventions and two Deputy Presidents.
This is not just for the top level though. The same three into one will apply at provincial and County level with the successful ‘ground up’ model of the One Club model being used as a template.
Having spent the past two decades playing, coaching and acting on Committees in such a club that is heartening to hear. Having been part of a delegation from such a club to meet with the group a little over a year ago, that feeling is doubled.
It will not be proscriptive and there will be exceptions in different circumstances around the country but this will be a case where perfect will not get in the way of good, and with all aspects of the Gaelic Games ‘family’ gradually and inexorably coming to sit at the same table.
In the coming weeks the Annual Congresses of the three bodies will be updated on the work of the last year and a half and plans for the next 36 months.
Messages are circling the country to all units with details of the broad brush timetable announced today.
Working groups came together across the organisations in November 2023 and have already delivered much. They will continue to do so now in the space and time afforded by a three year rather than a three month window.
Mary McAleese will remain as chair of the group that will “act as a hub for the working groups’ and as the engine driving progress towards integration.
“Gaelic games are about to enter a new era. We are now at a point where the will of the members of the Gaelic Games Associations on integration can be delivered if our recommendations are followed and acted upon and made real,” she said.
Outgoing GAA President Larry McCarthy has brought it this far and his successor from this weekend, Jarlath Burns was in the room today, with a front seat to the historic announcement.
He may yet prove to be the last President of a men-only GAA. When his successor is elected at Congress in 2026 it will be to take over an Association that is made up of distinctly different sports but which are open to all on a gender blind basis.
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