Sir, - The grounds for GAA's Rule 21, excluding members of the RUC, have nothing to do with sport, and everything to do with sectarian politics. The moral failings of the RUC and its members are offered as grounds for the exclusion; since no similar exclusion is applied to members of the Continuity IRA, one is forced to conclude that either the GAA does not find the Continuity IRA morally objectionable, or the ban is an example of pure, arbitrary discrimination for divisive, intolerant political purposes. Arbitrary discrimination is unjust.
Prior to the GAA's decision last weekend to retain Rule 21, a number of politicians, while calling for the rule to be abolished, also intimated that it was a private matter for the GAA. But the GAA is in direct receipt of Irish government funds to the tune of millions of taxpayers' punts. The practice of discrimination by a publicly-funded body is not a private matter, since the Irish taxpayer has a right to some accountability concerning the recipients of public funds.
Apart from the discrimination involved, Rule 21 has another, less-noticed, but far more sinister effect: it imposes expulsion on any GAA member who joins the RUC. By maintaining the rule, the GAA as an organisation is indicating its intention to continue doing its utmost to prevent nationalists from joining the RUC. Yet the RUC can never be acceptable to the nationalist community unless a proportionate number of the police come from that community. Thus, it is inconsistent to the point of cynicism for the GAA to claim that the ban will be removed when the RUC has become acceptable to the nationalist community, since the ban is designed precisely to prevent that happening.
While structural reforms of the RUC are needed and overdue, and members of the RUC are not guiltless of rights abuses, the GAA's method of exclusion, as opposed to engagement, only polarises the two communities and makes police reform more difficult. The GAA's rule is not the only factor keeping the RUC almost entirely Protestant: but it is the factor for which the GAA has to take responsibility.
It is Irish government policy (as represented in the Good Friday agreement) that the RUC should be made acceptable to the nationalist community. It will not do for southern politicians to call for reform of the RUC, while turning a blind eye to the GAA's decision. This is a vitally important matter of public policy, endorsed by over 90 per cent of the electorate, yet obstructed by a state-subsidised organisation. It is time for the government to give serious consideration to suspending public funding for the GAA until Rule 21 has been abolished or suspended. - Yours, etc., Seamus Murphy, SJ,
Milltown Institute,
Dublin 6.