Professor Mary McAleese:

The Deputy is quite right because all those things are on the table and those are all things we have discussed at length. The uachtaráin, especially of the LGFA and CA, have been working on this problem of the imbalance at county-intercounty level between male and female footballers. I do not think there is huge resistance. There may very well be pockets of resistance which we pass through as the integration project delivers. As I think Senator Byrne said, they will be history by the time we get to the sesquicentenary of the GAA and it will be a new GAA. There are things we pass through. There are three organisations that have grown up over very substantial periods of time with their own cultures, some with much greater resources than others.

Once we become one organisation with equality of membership, there are consequential realities. That was brought home to me very clearly in a discussion we had with the GPA which gave a really good presentation to the integration committee. We raised with the representatives the issue of the money currently available for male players. There is a worry about whether that would have to be doubled or trebled and where would that money come from. It was interesting. The GPA, which has been pushing the integration project and which kind of lives equality with the joint male-female presidency, said very emphatically to us that whatever the pot of money is it is divided equally. I asked whether that would mean the men might have to take a reduced level and the GPA said that would be a logical consequence. In other words, whatever the pool of money is it is divided among everybody in one association where all are equal members. I was very taken with all that because that is a consequential reality for one organisation for all Gaelic games where all become members. Those who play camogie and those who play ladies' Gaelic football will not be arguing about entitlement to play on a local GAA pitch and having people tell them they did not pay for this. We are members of the GAA. How to finesse that at both local and county level is with really good fixture management and financial management and with an ethos that is now embedded - we are beginning to see it more and more embedded - and that is an ethos not just of integration but of equality, which is an essential component of integration. I was very taken by the GPA's honesty and forthrightness on this.