"No other organisation in this country would get away with that..." Sinead O'Carroll | McAleese steps down from SGI

0:00This is a free off the ball podcast. For access to the best in sporting analysis from the lakes of Brain O Driscoll, Andy Don, Kevin Kilban, Deon Fanning, Tommy Waj, Darren O'Sullivan and last more, becoming off the ball in Ember today. Join in the obsession. Subscribe now at offtheball.com for a flat join. The off the ball rugby roach show is coming to your province. Join some of the biggest stars from Lenscher, Monster, Ulster and Connockt. As we travel around the country to preview the 2026-27 rugby season. Don't miss your chance to be there. Get your tickets now at offtheball.com for slash events. Off the ball. GAA. Welcome back to Tuesday nights. Off the ball it is a leal one-illup against Betis after half an hour there. Troy Parrott's, Ray Albetis says, we're supposed to call them at all times and do your full rundown with all the first halves of those games in around 15 or 20 minutes' time.

1:02As I mentioned before, the break we're due to have a slight tangent tonight. That's going to be online only this week so you can get that back on the off the ball YouTube channel or wherever you get your off the ball podcast for free this week. Because we have to stick tonight with the story around Gaelic Games and Integration. If you're just joining us, you may have missed the news that Dr. Mary Macaillies has stepped down as chairperson of the Integration Committee overseeing the amalgamation of the three organizations. The GAA, LGFA and Komogi Association. To put it bluntly, she tore into the GAA in an interview on Inside Sport and Radio 1 earlier this evening and it now raises plenty of questions about the management of the GAA and perhaps more importantly when, if ever, Integration is actually going to happen. Shinedo Karel, editor of the journalist with us on the line now. Shinedo, how are you doing? Not too bad. Unfortunately, I kind of predicted that this news would come sooner rather than later. When did you first have that inkling? Oh, it's probably, it's definitely long before Mary Macaillies did, unfortunately.

2:03We started doing it on our podcast myself in Gavin Cuney and on myself in Nile Kelly. Have a podcast. We probably started talking about our death, death, death, death, death, integration over a year and a half ago, maybe even two years ago. I was worried that this year in group weren't giving us enough detail along the way. Any time that I talked to people in the steering group, I understood their process. They were like, we want to have as many ducks in a row as possible before we go out so that people aren't worried about the things that they will worry about. But you could see the briefing start to happen. When you know why things are starting to appear in papers, why headlines with figures of 500 million to a billion are getting out there. You know why that's happening. I could tell from here that that length out that the GA no longer wants this to happen anymore. If the GA doesn't want it to happen, it's not going to happen. Tom Parsons mentioned earlier on in the show that the financial aspect is actually all smoke and mirrors.

3:05Completely. What is the real reason, do you think? What is holding the GA back from fully going into this? It is and it isn't the real reason. It is the real reason in that the GA does not want to share what it has. It wants to have its cake and eat it. It wants to have everything that a currently has. It wants to pretend that it's a community organisation and put out all the ads it puts out and get all the political capital it puts out for being an organisation of the community and for the community. But when it comes to actually sharing the spoils of the labour of every man and woman and boy and girl that has ever worked for and within the GA. It does not want to do that. It wants to do what it wants with that. And this is just absolutely making sure that every laggard on gender equality and every laggard on equality of experience within the GA not just on gender but on everything.

4:05And it's just making them the fools and making the non-laggards the fools and the laggards win the game. So every single club and I'm really glad to hear Mary MacLease say that the shift from the GA and this is a betrayal of one club. There are about 800 one clubs around the country who have done integration and probably at varying levels of success. But the ones who have done it for years and have done it well operate on it as a one club. Every single boy and girl that entered the GA they pay their subs as one GA member as the exact same as their brother and sister they treated the same. They should be in theory they should have the same facilities. They should have the same access to everything that is available in that club and there's 800 of those clubs around the country who have managed to do this. There's a number of counties ready to press the water on integration because they have done the work and they want to do it. And there are just other clubs and other country boards who don't want to have to share their spoils with people who were involved in getting.

5:08That those like the GA was not built just on the blood and sweat of men it was built on the blood and sweat of men and women sometimes for her links sometimes for football sometimes for ladies football sometimes for Khmoby sometimes for routers sometimes for a handle. And it's just really just pointing that they would say it's because we need more money. No, so what they're saying is we need more money to be able to treat women equitably or with the quality we need more money. No other organization in the country would get away with saying that. Can you imagine the F.A.I. going into a rockedist committee and saying I know you're giving out about how we're treating women but actually we don't have enough money to do what you're asking us to do. So sorry we're just going to say no to that and the combat was in five years time and we'll ask the minister would have this most scathing statement ready for the F.A.I. If they did anything close to that. When Jarla Burns was in front of the rock disk committee he lauded the commercial possibilities of an integrated organization.

6:09He said it's going to be one of the biggest dividends for us that has a fully integrated organization. We're going to be unstoppable in terms of commercial capability. Looking at this in a very callous cold way. That doesn't make sense. That doesn't tally with the way in which this news day has gone. If it was going to increase the commercial dividend for the organization then surely integration was going to be a good thing even for those who don't want to share their spoils because their spoil would have got bigger. Yeah, there's it does make a commercial sense. Any one clubs that see the fundraising happen all joined together. It you know it really works and it creates a much more vibrant much more real version of the community side of things that the GA says that it's the best at. When you don't have that you have a fractured system where lots of different teams are going to the same pool of people for fundraising capabilities. You have different committees signed up to try and do things so that at a larger scale then that's the same things that that happens to the organizations when they go for sponsorship or they go for advertising money across brands.

7:20So it would make sense. But what's happening with the GA right now is they're kind of getting to do that. Like have you seen an ad for the GA with no girls in us in the last few years. Let's go points. You haven't. Yeah. Every single time the GA put themselves front and center with their community message. There was a girl or a woman in that in that ads like I'm thinking of the club championships at championship ads or. You know anything that is is put out that they always play into this idea of community. But now they're telling us well actually we're not really ready for all community what really mean is we kind of want you and we want you. But can you just be happy with your lot for now. And maybe in five years time we'll just start this process again like so and we'll take another four years to get to this point where it looks like we might be ready to press the button and then we won't. I think the other real telling thing probably actually said that I probably had questions for the last two years I probably started to have questions started to get burns.

8:28And presidency because it wasn't in his list of priorities. And it was kind of unusual to have the date for integration to be 2027 his presidency coming to the end in 2026 and enough be in his list of priorities. And he also had someone fortunate words at the start of his presidency about the the difference in importance between the men the men's game and the women's game. And I'm sure he would say he didn't really mean it said something about you know that the pressure of the men's game because there was so many eyes on it was was more. So those two things kind of had me. I'd make questioning whether it was actually high in his list of priorities and if it's not on the high on list of the president's priorities. You probably are in a situation where you do question the bona fide is of the integration process which Mary McLean said she didn't do until really recently. And now she is questioning the bona fide is of every single time they said that they were dedicated to the process and you know so stark that she said tonight that it's just not going to happen like.

9:35That's like that's for she said it's four years for a week life wasted four years of steering group four years of rock to committee meetings four years of a lot of a lot of people trying to get this done well like there's so many people you've been trying like I'm thinking of. I can't do boards like the park were ready go away were ready Dublin had made a lot of headway. So and the one clubs I keep going back to the one clubs there's probably executives in one clubs around the country being like what we we did this years ago what is going on that you can't just do this at a greater scale. This clubs across the country is just figuring out the facilities thing it's not perfect yes we all need more facilities but if you asked any sporting organization across the country everyone would like more facilities athletics clubs would like more tracks they would like more green space for their field sports. You know there's sports here don't have any facilities they'd like an ice rink and cherry ones like a white water rafting facility on the lifie yeah like there's you know the the GA have been spoiled they dominate government funding and they dominate government funding because they will say in funding.

10:52The G. Don't get government funding if you say we're only going to make this open to 50% population the government funding because it's a community organization that they say is open to all they have now just said the absolute opposite out loud to everybody including their members which is really disappointing without actually doing it. Straight forwardly it's in a backhanded way a letter to Mary Maccalaise not telling the minister not telling sport Ireland not telling their own members going against their own members like this is not a lot of people members like this this was voted for Congress 2022. Like GA members voted for this and now it's you know now it's all a mess unless you know there is a very stick approach from the minister tomorrow when he meets them. Yeah and it is important to mention that the GA have obviously been contacted for a comment I suspect we may not hear from them until after that meeting with the minister tomorrow and I mean you would expect that the minister should be taking a strong handed approach on all of this but we will wait and see to see what actually goes down there that just in terms of other red flags that I know you've been your antenna been pricked for a long time on this.

12:02But just to kind of go back there there were signs a long way back and a number of them throughout this year even like you look back at May 2026 Irish examiner all three monster associations have concerns about integration timeline says province share. So this is Tim Murphy who runs the monster council Tim Murphy is also on the management committee of the GEA that we've gone through earlier on the 19 person management committee and in his program notes for the monster football final earlier this year. He spoke on behalf of all three organizations which are the ladies get a football association for for monster and the community association and monster as well as the monster council and he said that they had significant concerns about the overly ambitious timeline for the merger to be completed by 2027 then he went on to talk about having met with Lorraine royal who's the monster LGFA president and Christine Ryan the monster Kamoge chairperson we collectively agree that a federal model would be the most effective framework to facilitate gradual integration which like an hindsight is.

13:07Matt Reid like as you point out there had been a vote on integration nationwide prior to this point and then there was one rule over a thief to going out and saying actually maybe the thing that we've all voted for isn't the way for that a federation rather than a fully integrated organization is the way we should be going in hindsight this was mad stuff. Yeah and the steering committee and this is why I think maybe there was a mistake from the steering committee that they weren't you know they said that they were trying to be as transparent as possible and public as possible but it was quite difficult to get very good information about where they were in you know in documenting some of this stuff and getting to timelines because there is no way you would have ever been able to get to a point where you it's just done like you know it's always going to be a process it's. It's always going to be you know we have to have frameworks in place so this can happen and we can move towards it and nobody was.

14:08No one in reality thought that that meant that every single piece of equality would fall into place straight away and that's just not how it works anyway in GA or in sports like depending on what county you're in you know there won't there won't be equal status of football and hurting you know you in a football county you'll talk to her. And they'll say it's not a gender question it's just that we don't get treated as well as the footballers do because it's in a football county and vice versa so there's always going to be that reality tiered on to whatever was going to happen with integration and I think most members are aware very aware of that because. LGFA and Khmogi members are GA members by in reality on the ground like for non GA members this all this whole debate seems bonkers what you mean you're not all the same and like so the frameworks for the actual organizations to be put together needs to be there and then work out the realities on the ground and the problems and we would have sticky situations I think like there are a few have found themselves in like the F.A.I. have found themselves in when there are just.

15:14And I think that's the key point with fixtures or sticky points with you know men or women who make decisions based on their own. Loyalty's to the teams that they love rather than you know the how things should happen and I thought it was. It's interesting to hear how little Mary Mac least wanted to say in detail but that she was point into that she did feel that there was a situation now that there was people. At the top echelons of the GA who didn't want women involved in the decision making and is that because some of that equality piece would happen more quickly. Then the status quo the status quo for the GA right now is excellent so I can see why they don't want to change it like. They have great gate receipts they have GA plus so they're about to you know embark on a whole new. Business world where they don't need or tease more as they used to where they have to be careful about that but.

16:15And you know they have this whole profitable business model that they got first steel of 40. And they have football that is now in a much better place than before they still have monster hurling like they they have you know so many numbers coming in the door. Like the status quo for the GA they're getting sports capital funding you know GA clubs are getting three like I think out of every. A bit of sports capital funding the GA gets like a huge share of us I can't remember the figures right now at the top my head but the GA clubs do much better than other clubs a lot of that is because it's for the community. So there in a great place why would they not want to keep the status quo just so yeah sorry just that's a side on that Maclease. The G.A. must be thinking you know in hindsight what were we thinking at the time you're thinking we've fantastic we've got a former president of Ireland an absolute icon of this country and unstoppable force leading this whole thing up she's going to power through to the next stage of our growth as an organization.

17:22And now after they've got called for like oh my god why did we install this absolute force in nature to run this thing that we've now got called feed about because she doesn't really care if she throws us into the bus and says what's what on national radio. Yeah and like she she did say that the last time she met the management committee she had to remind them that the GA came to her not the other way around she was like integration is not my idea this wasn't me coming and asking you to do this you came to me and asked will you be the independent chair to do this. I do think there's an interesting political side to that story as well like in 2022 there was a vote taken this was very obviously on the cards all the membership basically of the three organizations wanted to the playing membership wanted it to happen there was a vote there was a huge vote for it to happen. And there has been a huge political change in how we talk about everything but how in particular how we talk about equality and how we talk with gender equality and I think there is now more confidence to people who would have always been naysayers on it to say all of that stuff out loud sure we don't need it what's wrong with what's happening now we can't afford them.

18:34Egg you know that they need to say the same we don't like how this was all done that's a that's a big thing being briefed tonight it was just how it was being done we didn't like my criteria settle power was being done. What's that leading to Schneider do you think. I think it's just a thing to for people to say so that they can pick something down the can like it like it's the specifics in terms of what was done that they perceive not to be the right way. I haven't seen any specifics just that yeah this is not this isn't the way that we wanted to know that it maybe it was too quick but you know 2022 the time nice 2027. All the clubs that aren't one clubs had a long period to engage with uproarsess if they wanted to to get ahead of the game so it wasn't you know being foisted upon them four years later or five years later. Yeah it's it's just disappointing that all of that nasing has has stole the progress of it or stuck to progress of it and I do think this is a money story on top of everything else like the amount of money that the GA gets from the state based on it being a community organization.

19:47And integration has always been the thing that has been pointed to that allows them to prove that and now they're saying we're not ready for it. I think that becomes a money story for the government why are we giving this organization more money than most other sporting organizations when they have now said we are not ready and we're not willing and we are not capable of treating women equally. Or equitably because they said they're going towards equity not equality but they still wanted in five years time i'm like okay so even if you change the words you still want to kick it down the count five years and give no road map and give no reason why you overturn your own vote or. Like shown us what governance like how did you come to this like who did you talk to come to this decision who's why was this letter sent who are the decisions make makers for this letter to be sent. Why did we cancel these special congresses or they have to cancel yet but like they will be now.

20:54So many questions there that and the GA haven't come out and said on things tonight so today think they were going to send this letter to Mary McLeese and not have to say anything for the next couple of days go meet the minister tomorrow about herding academy budgets get the budget that they want for herding academy. And not be asked what happens to the girls if we give you this money for herding academies. It's bizarre actually that they've said all this stuff out there because they they have always been able to point to this or you know the way sometimes over the years you remember a few years ago there was a column about how misogynistic the GA was. And then you know people are at pains to point out well actually there's three different organizations so if something happens within ladies football or something happens within Moge say for example the squirts over the last couple of years. You know the squirts was very much just a comogie associations controversy had nothing really to do with the GA at all. So you have a lot of people explaining that like actually the GA is an inherently misogynistic organization.

21:59You know there is a separation and we you know people like me would be a pains to explain it and often defend the GA. That defense looks way weaker today now based on what Mary Macclyce has said and based on now what we know that the GA have done in terms of their own promises around integration. Schneider Carol editor of the journal thanks many for joining us this evening. Thank you. Cheers we'll take a quick break. Off the ball GA. The Off the Ball rugby Roach show is coming to your province. Join some of the biggest stars from Lenscher, Monster, Ulster and Connacht as we travel around the country to preview the 2026-27 rugby season. Don't miss your chance to be there. Get your tickets now at Off the Ball.com forward slash events. This is a free Off the Ball podcast for access to the best in sporting analysis from the lakes of brain o Driscoff and Edone Kevin Kilban, Deon Fanning, Tommy Waj,

23:03Darren O'Sullivan and last more becoming Off the Ball member today. Join in the obsession. Subscribe now at Off the Ball.com forward slash join. Join in the obsession.