Mr. Páraic Duffy:

The GAA is pleased to have this opportunity to brief the committee on the background to, and the guiding principles informing, the association's recent award of broadcast rights for coverage of its games during the period 2014 to 2017. We are particularly glad to do so in light of some of the comment prompted by our decisions. At the first meeting we convened to set in motion the process of negotiations for the broadcast rights, Mr. O'Neill and I set down the objectives we hoped to achieve. At the top of the list, receiving a necessary priority recognised by all of us in Croke Park, was the need to make our games available to Irish people living abroad. This issue of accessibility to our games on live television has been over the years by far the single biggest issue raised with us when we spoke with our members outside Ireland. In planning our negotiations of the new contracts, the GAA felt it had an obligation to Irish people living abroad to respond to their appeals on this issue if for no other reason than the fact that many of them while living at home had contributed to the association as members and were now continuing that work in GAA clubs abroad.

There are now 392 affiliated GAA clubs overseas, double the number of a decade ago, and they are spread across the world in Britain and North America, continental Europe, Australia, the Middle East and Asia. This is, in part, an indication of the popularity of Gaelic games and a reflection of the sheer size of the Irish family abroad and this expanding Irish family was the new reality facing the GAA as it approached the negotiations for new broadcast contracts.

Few, if any, people in this room have not had personal experience of the sorrow that emigration brings. The most painful separation is that caused by the parting from family and friends but there is also the separation from one’s culture. It is fair to say that, for many Irish people, the GAA and its games are an important part of the daily Irish cultural experience. Many Irish people love Gaelic games and, for those who live abroad, not being able to follow them through live television coverage in their homes is a privation. It is this cultural yearning that we in GAA headquarters have been made constantly aware of with increasing intensity over recent years. When Mr. O'Neill and I first convened to consider the new television rights contracts, we knew that we had to address this issue head on.

This was the priority issue in our approach to the rights negotiations but we wished to achieve two other important objectives. First, we needed to ensure our games would continue to be widely available on television and radio to our domestic audience. Our home base of members and supporters, attached to their clubs and counties, constitute our single most important audience. Second, we needed, as any responsible organisation must do, to protect the important part of our revenue generated by income from broadcast rights. The GAA can only achieve its sporting and cultural goals if it retains its capacity to fund the work of its clubs at home and abroad.

These were our objectives, and I will speak about the solutions we adopted to meet these objectives.

I will deal with the financial or revenue issue immediately as it can be very quickly addressed. It is a simple fact that in revenue terms the total value of the new broadcast contracts is only marginally an improvement on the previous contracts. Quite simply, finance was not the key priority in our negotiations.

I will summarise the main elements of the agreements we reached with our broadcast partners, which were designed to meet our objectives of making our games accessible to our Irish audiences at home and abroad. First, five more championship games have been made available for TV broadcast for the next three years - 45 versus 40 - compared to the period 2011 to 2014. Second, RTE will broadcast the same number of games as under the previous contract, a total of 31. We would also point out that RTE asked to broadcast 31 live games. RTE has been granted exactly the number of games it wanted to broadcast. Third, Irish people living in Britain will, for the first time, be able to watch matches live via Sky Sports, which will exclusively broadcast 14 games in total, eight of which are qualifier games. To view these games will require a subscription to Sky Sports. In a simulcast arrangement with RTE, Sky will broadcast live the all-Ireland football and hurling semi-finals and finals. Fourth, Irish people in Australia will, for the first time, be able to watch live TV coverage of Gaelic games; they will be able to watch all 45 championship games free-to-air.

The UK and Australia are by far the two most important destinations for Irish emigrants in recent years. The GAA's experience confirms that more than half of the players transferring out of Ireland have gone to clubs in Britain, with Australia providing the next highest number. In addition, millions of viewers in the UK and Australia will be able to watch our great games of hurling and Gaelic football for the first time on TV in their own homes. Fifth, a new joint venture with RTE Digital will provide access to all championship games to Irish people all over the world by means of the Internet. This is a hugely significant development for Irish people abroad.

Of the 18 most important championship games of the year - namely, the six provincial finals, the six all-Ireland quarter finals, four all-Ireland semi-finals and the all-Ireland finals in hurling and football - 16 will be broadcast free-to-air on RTE. Only two quarter finals will not be free-to-air.

As a conclusion to this summary of the new TV broadcast contracts, Mr. O'Neill and I would like to point out that there has never been so much live TV coverage of Gaelic games. In other words, the GAA has done all in its power in recent years to make its games available to its domestic audience while at the same time protecting for supporters the special experience of attending games.

With these new contracts, over 100 games will be broadcast free-to-air in each of the next three years, covering all levels of GAA competition - senior, minor, under-21, colleges and universities. Over the years there has been a constant increase in live TV coverage of our games. Therefore, we do not believe that the charge made against the GAA of disenfranchising its supporters is sustainable. There is not a single weekend from the third weekend in May to the start of October on which live GAA championship matches will not be available on free-to-air terrestrial TV. In fact, the new broadcasting contracts ensure free-to-air live TV coverage of GAA games on at least 40 of the 52 weekends of the year.

We would also point out that it has never been the case that all championship games have been broadcast live on domestic TV - far from it. We have, at best, allowed only about half of our championship games to be covered on live TV, a fact that our critics have not taken into consideration. We have always had to find the balance between live TV coverage and the need to encourage our supporters to attend GAA matches. The presence of supporters at matches is the lifeblood of our games and is vital to the special atmosphere of the GAA matches. There is nothing new in the fact that a very substantial proportion of our championship matches are not being broadcast live on TV - quite the contrary. In order to follow the fortunes of their county team, supporters of Gaelic games have long been going to matches or following progress on radio or watching highlights on TV. In this respect, the new TV contracts change absolutely nothing.

We have said that we set ourselves three objectives in approaching the negotiations on the new broadcast contracts, but, as everyone can appreciate - especially those who have ever been involved in commercial negotiations - objectives can, in whole or in part, be somewhat in competition with each other. Specifically, we saw immediately that it would not be possible to fully satisfy our objectives with regard to making our games available on live TV to our domestic Irish audience and to our Irish audiences abroad. I want to make a crucial point about our approach to these negotiations. Due to the unfortunate return of Irish emigration and the presence abroad of Irish people from previous phases of emigration, it is no longer tenable for the GAA to regard the Irish audience for Gaelic games as simply being Irish people living in Ireland. There are now so many Irish people living abroad, so many Irish people who are GAA supporters and who want to see our games live on TV, that we simply must take them into consideration when negotiating broadcast contracts. That being the case and in order for us to cater for these Irish people living abroad, the new contracts will see a relatively small reduction in the number of free-to-air games available to the Irish audience at home. This was the balance we had to strike in seeking to meet the competing claims of our two very different audiences, the audience at home and the audience abroad. It is simply not possible, in the current configuration of the delivery of television sport, for the GAA to ensure free-to-air coverage of all its games while at the same time making its games accessible to Irish people at home and abroad. To put it another way, if we had decided that all TV coverage of our games was to be free-to-air, we would have had to abandon what we saw as our obligation to our Irish supporters abroad and we felt we could not do this. We believe that we have achieved a balance in the allocation of broadcast rights that meets the needs of our supporters at home and abroad, a balance that we will seek to maintain into the future. We will monitor the impact of these arrangements over the next three years and we want to make it absolutely clear today that it is the intention of the GAA that beyond 2017 our games will continue to be widely available free-to-air on TV to Irish audiences.

There has been a cynical reaction by some to the announcement of the new contracts. Cynicism has always been the easy refuge of those who are afraid to engage in analysis and reasonable debate. I refer to the cynical claim which would have it that the GAA went to Sky for the money; not only is this not true, but it also conveniently avoids noticing the recent announcement of a major investment by the GAA in redeveloping the Ruislip grounds in London, a project also made possible by financial support from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The London redevelopment will serve not only the GAA but also the whole Irish community in London. It is a tangible example of the GAA’s commitment to the Irish community abroad. It is also a manifestation of our awareness that the GAA cannot treat our members and supporters abroad as second-class Irish citizens. It is worth recalling that the investment in redevelopment in Ruislip is just one example of the manner in which the bulk of the GAA’s revenue goes back out to GAA units to help fund their sporting, cultural and social missions.

We cannot overcome the barriers of physical separation and distance created by emigration, but new forms of communication allow us to create links that will mitigate that separation. It is our hope that as this year’s championships progress, the Irish at home, who have lost a small number of free-to-air TV games, will feel that giving up these few games is a small price to pay as they hear back how their family members and friends abroad are following Gaelic games live on TV or on the Internet.

For the Irish abroad, for the next three years, watching GAA championship hurling and football matches live on television or on the Internet will make them feel a little closer to home.