Mr. Iarlaith ? Broin:

My response to that is that many county boards are already thinking about integration. My own county was in the national league ladies final last Sunday. It coincided with the first round of the GAA fixtures in Armagh. We moved them all back to Saturday to make sure that everybody could go. People are being responsible on that.

Mr. Naughton is right when he says that there is always a logical reason that you cannot have double headers. It may be due to the state of the pitch. Some people would say well why not play a ladies All-Ireland before the All-Ireland final as we do not have a minor match now. LGFA or An Cumann Camógaíochta would not want to go anywhere near that. They have their own massive events, keynote, blue ribbon events. It is part of the strategic plan of An Cumann Camógaíochta to move from 30,000 and 55,000. That would be an incredible achievement for it. We see what the LGFA has done as well.

In regard to what was said, it is a really good point and I refer to it as well, the €40 million that we are spending on preparing our county teams is not sustainable for us. We know that. I have formed an amateur status committee, which is going to look at what it is like to be an amateur athlete in the current climate. LGFA is helping us with that, because we want to make it bearable for a young athlete to play for his county team.

Apart from that, with the number of training sessions going on and the amount that is being spent, and looking at the corporate sustainability reporting directive that we have to try to reduce pollution under the European Sustainability Reporting Standards, ESRS, if we are going to be a responsible, sustainable organisation we have to honour our obligations to the environment. I would hate to think what the carbon footprint is of all those journeys being made. We were at the Pittsburgh Steelers the week before last and I asked Dan Rooney, "What is the longest journey that any of your players make to train?" He said that some players have to travel for 20 minutes. Tom Parsons used to travel for two-and-a-half hours from Dublin to play in Castlebar. That sort of thinking is outdated in the modern era considering our responsibilities to the environment. We need to be making serious decisions around the number of training sessions that our players are making. If we manage to do that then it will become easier to achieve genuine equality, not by bringing the female players up but by bringing everybody down to a level where amateur athletes can have a life and play and represent their counties.