GAELIC GAMES: The GAA yesterday received €3.59 million in funding from the Irish Sports Council to be divided among hurling, Dublin GAA and the grassroots programme. Gavin Cummiskey reports

The grant brings funding from a special Budget measure aimed at increasing participation by young people in Gaelic Games to €9 million over the last four years.

"Its actually a fulfilment of what I requested in my very first speech when I was elected uachtarán," said GAA president SeáKelly.

"(I said) we would look to the Government for more funding, particularly for hurling. In fairness to the Minister (for Sport, John O'Donoghue) he listened to us.

"They have also given us money for the development of the game in Dublin, which was badly needed and is now up and running."

The funding is in addition to the €109 million in public funds (Government and Lottery) supplied for the redevelopment of Croke Park. Kelly was also clear it had no relation to the redevelopment of Lansdowne Road, which led to the temporary suspension of Rule 42 at last year's Congress.

"It's strings-free, to a degree," continued Kelly. "They obviously demand a certain amount of accountability and I welcome that. Anybody left to their own devices can think they are doing a great job and it may not be the case. Certain standards are required and I'm quite happy with that.

"When I went to Government I said no strings attached and that's the way it was. They gave us money for Croke Park and the same here but they are different aspects altogether.

"If they had tried to attach strings I don't think they would have got Rule 42 changed. I was able to stand up without fear of contradiction (and affirm) that the money was being given to us on the basis on what we had done and what we planned to do in the future."

Regarding the 1,000 vacant seats at last Sunday's All-Ireland hurling final, Kelly again expressed the association's regret a "human error" had occurred.

He cited the extreme pressure put on the Croke Park ticketing system, caused by the hurling final coming just a week after a football semi-final and the general increase in all-ticket affairs at the stadium this year.

"It was a once-off, I think, down to administration, I suppose, within Croke Park. It's never before happened and wouldn't have happened if the tickets had not got mixed up with the football tickets."

He also confirmed that no GAA employee would be singled out over the loss of €60,000 in revenue caused by the mix-up.

"This is the first time there has been a major faux pas and we will look at the reasons. Rather than trying to knock heads of people (together) we will look at putting a system in place to ensure it won't happen again. That has to be looked at now.

"Obviously there was the initial allocation and sometimes tickets are not taken up and that kind of thing. We have to find out. That has to be looked into now to find out why it wasn't spotted in advance.

"That's a fair question but we haven't got the full answers to that. All we've got at the moment is the tickets were found and they have been counted and now we will look at why they hadn't been spotted sooner."

Kelly, meanwhile, said the delayed announcement of a national director of hurling was due to the role evolving beyond its initial remit.

"When we were drawing up the various projects the thing developed and grew more than we had anticipated," he explained.

"Therefore, the reference we had initially had expanded."

Sports Council Funding

Grassroots €1.34m

Hurling 1.25m

Dublin GAA €1m