Joe O'Reilly: Local Game Must Come First

Thanks Chair. Would greater access to the All-Ireland Provincial Club Championships assist the International GAA? Could you devise strategies for greater involvement? I'm not so sure about that. I think part of what we've tried to outline today is that, you know, success from our point of view is a sustainable, local, thriving game. Within the area. Exactly, exactly. And even to take that a further level, that the predominance of players are produced locally and that, you know, one of your colleagues there asked a question about the vagaries of emigration and so on. So you want to reach a stage where the games can thrive irrespective of what those trends might be. I see the logic of that. I think you might also see, you know, with the best will in the world, you might also see some disparity in terms of playing standards. And Charlie mentioned specifically that purely because of things like limitations around facilities and the size of playing pitches and so on, the games are not always organised everywhere on a 15-a-side basis. So there are, of course, and you'll be aware that European club teams do play in the club championships at the moment. I think the scope for expanding upon that in the short term, to be honest with you, is probably limited. Yeah, thank you. A final question, both Senator Ahern and the deputy earlier covered the question of the finance and the total amount of monies you're getting from the department and I think that's well discussed. But is there any other assistance that government could give you abroad in your work? Is there any assistance other than the actual cash by helping you with networking through embassies, whatever? Yeah, we've definitely seen that, Senator, in recent times where we're starting to get more assistance from embassies and definitely the enhanced relationship, as I mentioned earlier on, between the DFA and the GEA is definitely seeing an increase in activity. So any of our major events that we would host, there's definitely members of the consulate there. And again, stressing the point, recognition in the countries that we are in is one of our main strategic goals and that's where we need assistance. Final remark, Chair. I am delighted to hear that because one thing I've discovered, and my colleague Senator Ahern would have similarly discovered through our work with the Council of Europe, is that we have an extraordinary, a wonderful network of diplomats internationally and a team with each of them that could do so much to assist. So that's great news. As recently as last month, we 21 out of the 26 EU ambassadors in Croke Park, we explained what World GEA is, what the GEA is, and they were very receptive to us. They were very happy to help us in their respective countries be able to grow their games. On Europe Day on the 9th of May last year, we had our ambassadors in Ireland who were here for the Global Ireland Civic Forum. We brought them into Croke Park, the European delegation, and we struck up a relationship there to see how we can work together and help each other's objectives. And I think that's something strategically that I suppose the Association supports and the Department of Foreign Affairs supports. Thank you. Thank you, Chair.