The time has come for enlightened governance and a rejection of the personal agendas that have clouded the actions of the Motions Committee over the last two years. On an issue as great and emotive as this, annual congress is an inadequate forum now. It has always been remote from the mass body of the membership. The age-old boast that the smallest club in the country can have a motion on the agenda has been increasingly exposed as an empty conceit. As an institution, congress is dying on its feet — discredited and undermined by the power broking of elite cartels.
The issue of opening up Croke Park demands that a plebiscite of all the clubs is held where every member of the association can feel truly enfranchised and relevant to the debate. The Motions Committee, however, rejected such a proposal this week, spitting in the face of democracy once more.
The motion came from Clare. Like all the other Rule 42 motions it was knocked back after its first submission with a confusing set of corrections attached. Its second submission, however, was rejected for different reasons — which had been omitted from the first set of corrections. Clearly the Motions Committee had no stomach for a plebiscite.
One of their arguments is that there is no provision in the rule book for a plebiscite — even though one was staged in 1971 to effectively remove the ban on playing foreign games. Annual congress was still charged with making the decision but that was merely a formality after the raised voice of the membership had been heard.
Roscommon somehow managed to smuggle a motion on a plebiscite past the hawk-eyes of the Motions Committee a couple of years ago but when it reached the congress floor it was diverted to central council. Four months later it showed up at the August central council meeting only for Sean Kelly to rule that central council had no power to deal with it. You would think that another spin at congress would have been the natural extension of the process but that’s not how the GAA deals with motions it views as hostile to the elite cartels. It disappeared into a black hole from which it couldn’t escape this week.
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Whether a plebiscite would result in the opening of Croke Park to soccer and rugby is no more than a matter of speculation but the anecdotal evidence suggests that it probably would. On the ground the vast majority of GAA people are not committed to a monogamous relationship with the GAA. They can’t conceive how such a thing would be healthy or useful. They’re not hung up on cultural nationalism or its emblems and symbols. They play other sports, watch other sports and if the GAA holds the deeds to their heart they’re comfortable with sub-letting to Munster or Manchester United. There is no telling exactly how many of these people exist but a plebiscite would give us a good idea and maybe that’s what the Motions Committee are afraid of.
As it stands it looks as if all of the seven motions relating to Rule 42 on the clar will require a two-thirds majority, which is a tall order. One of Clare’s motions calls for a derogation of the rule for three years while Lansdowne Road is being redeveloped and they had hoped that this would only require a simple majority given that it wasn’t proposing a permanent change of the rule. However the Motions Committee only accepted that motion on the grounds that it would be joined with their other motion calling for an amendment to the rule, which forces the derogation motion to require a two-thirds majority as well. It was another thinly disguised move to spike the guns of the reformers.
Over the last 18 months or so this issue has become increasingly bitter and the two points of view have become increasingly polarised. There are very few floating votes to be pursued on the run-in to congress and in the GAA it has always been easier to mobilise a “no” vote in any case. For the public image of the GAA it was a small dispensation that the Motions Committee sanctioned a debate this week — but it is only a stay of execution. The odds are slim that any of the motions on Rule 42 will succeed at congress and the perception of the GAA as a mean-spirited, inward-looking organisation will bristle on the airwaves once again.