Mr. Tom Ryan:

Let me outline one interesting aspect in terms of the social media question, and it relates to the other codes as well but in particular to ourselves. The high profile GAA stars and players are amateur players and the Monday after a weekend match they must attend college, work or wherever. Much of our discussion today has been, and rightly so, centred on the protection of referees but the same principles and rights extend to anybody irrespective of their role, whether it is playing or officiating a game.

What we would like to see is some understandable and easily communicable charter that sets out the rights and expectations of individuals when they feel they have been subjected to abuse. Criticism is fair and not something that any of us shies away from but it must be balanced, measured and informed.

I think Mr. Phillips defined abuse. There may well need to be something around that and I am not sure what the answer is. If a threshold is set then it would be fair to expect that when somebody who feels that threshold has been breached, with regard to themselves, they have some clear path or recourse, and are able to understand what course of action they can take and what are the responsibilities the social media firm involved. That would be a fantastic initiative not just for sport but for society in general.

In terms of the overall and general inclusiveness of sporting organisations, I hope people will have seen the GAA's involvement in things like Pride recently. I also wish to refer to the GAA's involvement in things like promoting Gaelic games among people from diverse backgrounds and people who have come to this country from overseas, with which we have made huge efforts. We would like to get to a stage where all of the protections and respects that we are talking about here today are afforded to everyone be it Gaelic games players, or GAA referees, irrespective of their country of origin, faith and sexual orientation. All of those principles apply across the board. The Senator might have seen, and I hope he did, that the GAA had a campaign called Where We All Belong.

I hesitate to call it a campaign. It is a little creed we try to adopt that says Gaelic games and the Gaelic games family are open to everybody irrespective of their background and that we value the contribution they make. Involving people from more diverse backgrounds can only make our association stronger.