Mary McAleese was appointed last year to be the Independent Chairperson of the Strategic Integration Group drawing together the GAA, LGFA and Camogie Association.

The Group consists of the Presidents and CEO’s of each of the bodies and has been in deep consultation mode over the last 12 months.

She was a guest on the first Late Late Show of the new era under Patrick Kielty and set a deadline of February 2024 to deliver a roadmap of how integration would proceed.

This line in the sand has focused minds on the thornier issues of coming together and the roadmap promises to be one of the most contentious but also the most important publications in sport in the coming 12 months.

A Law Graduate from Queens University, she worked as a Barrister and an academic there and at Trinity College Dublin, as well as in the media for a spell with RTÉ.

She was elected as President in 1997, and then unopposed for a second term in 2004. She was in office at the time of the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.

She was a keynote speaker at the Ireland US CEO Club Lunch as part of the Aer Lingus College Football Classic this year, where she was able to speak to some of her colleagues in her role as an Executive Fellow of the Notre Dame School of Global Affairs.

See who else has been named on the list alongside Louise Cassidy by clicking on the image below.

 

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See who else has been included so far on the list for 2023

This is the 11th edition of our Sport for Business listing of 50 Women of Influence in Irish Sport.

Read more about the list and nominate who you think should be a part of it in 2023.

We are proud to publish the list in partnership with AIG, an organisation that has pledged its commitment to equality in its partnerships with Gaelic Games, Tennis, Golf, and more, for whom “Effort is Equal” and with whom we have ambitious plans to extend the reach of this annual celebration of the Women who are making a difference.

This year’s list will be drawn as before from the worlds of leadership, partnership, storytelling, and performance.

We began this journey in 2013 when challenged that we would never be able to produce a list of twenty Influential Women in Irish Sport. The 20 stretched to 30, then 40 and 50 and it still does not do justice to the talent that is out there.

This year once more, to keep things fresh we will step up again, raising the number of new entrants to at least 40 percent of fresh names from last year.

It will be the hardest part to have some names replaced but if it was too easy it would be of less value.

The list we will build over the coming weeks is a snapshot of those women who are making a mark on how sport is played, consumed, grown, and delivered.

They are part of making the role of women in sport unexceptional by being exceptional in what they do.