This weekend's GAA Annual Congress, starting this afternoon at Dublin's Burlington Hotel, will be a lowkey affair despite the implementation of reforms to the decision-making process. It's a year since the handover from Jack Boothman to current president Joe McDonagh and a year before the next presidential election. Accordingly, there's a lull in the three-year cycle.
With no particularly exciting motions on the clar for the weekend, most attention will be on Joe McDonagh's speech and the extent to which he responds to developments in the north.
The focus on Rule 21, prohibiting the northern security forces from joining the GAA, is a matter of irritation for rank-and-file GAA members who don't see it as the most pressing item on the association's agenda but the GAA inhabits a wider world within which there is great interest in the progress of the Good Friday settlement. It will be a surprise if McDonagh doesn't address the matter at some stage of tomorrow afternoon's speech.
Elsewhere on the Congress agenda there will be interest in how effective the reforms of the working of congress prove. Last November, during a special one-day congress which was dominated by the report of the committee on amateur status, proposals from the Congress Review Committee were approved.
Principally, these involved shifting some of the business of Congress from the debating floor to workshop sessions which will be held this afternoon with their conclusions reported back to delegates tonight and tomorrow morning to allow more informed discussion on areas which can then form the foundation of future policy.
The impetus for these reforms came from Congress three years ago when a raft of amendments, painstakingly compiled by the Hurling Development Committee, were proposed by the Carlow delegation (because in an anomaly now remedied, Central Council and provincial councils were not allowed propose motions at Congress), only to be randomly shot down by delegates who exhibited little sign that they understood, let alone had thought about, the matters under discussion.
This had implications for the way in which the HDC approached the selling of their more radical league and championship reforms at the London Congress of 1996. It also convinced the GAA that Congress wasn't working.
Too many delegates were arriving to debate motions which they hadn't researched and about which they knew little or nothing. Consequently the standard of debate was poor and the resulting gut instinct was to vote down proposals.
Moving discussions into workshop sessions which will be held in camera is designed to allow frank and detailed exchanges even if the workshops are not decision-making. There will be a representation from each delegation in attendance at the four workshops.
These will cover finance, the Director General's report, youth and the report of Bob Honohans' Schools' Development Workgroup. The first two will report back tonight and the other two tomorrow morning. The respective chairmen are: Fintan Ginnity (Meath), Nicky Brennan (Kilkenny), Christy Cooney (Cork) and PJ McGrath (Mayo).
Central Council will also meet tonight and among the items under consideration will be the recommendations of the Reinstatements or Mercy Committee on the cases submitted to it (believed to include Niall Cahalane who is serving a 12-month ban for a post-match incident involving referee Niall Barrett).
Motions will be taken tomorrow morning and afternoon.
