Minister, just write that grants cheque

On Gaelic GamesNot since the three-stranded relationships of the peace process has there been such a delicate tri-partite conundrum on the Government's desk. It is largely of their own making and concerns the Department of Sport, the GAA and the Gaelic Players Association.

The force with which players' grievances have blown up in recent weeks may be a surprise even to those conversant with the issues involved but in a way it's been inevitable.

The genesis of the idea of grants to intercounty footballers and hurlers goes back to the old £100 a week proposal, initiated by the GPA as an idea for partially compensating elite players for the monetary impact - worked out by an actuarial study - on their careers of playing top-level Gaelic games.

This appeared to have died and the question of compensation or grants only revived when the Government introduced a tax break scheme for professional sports people in 2002.

Led - somewhat confusingly considering its views on amateur status - by Croke Park there were protests over the exclusion of Gaelic games from the scheme (even though the GAA's players earn nothing that can be taxed from playing football and hurling - then Minister for Finance Charlie McCreevy having emphasised that the breaks were those earning directly from sport and not in the form of endorsements).

The GPA then formulated a concept of player grants based on the value of Gaelic games as distinct, cultural forms - along the lines of the Aosdána scheme for the arts.

There has been a long-running campaign to try to secure that funding. Many meetings have been held with Government ministers and the Taoiseach himself has expressed interest in the matter.

But until last January nothing concrete was on the table. Then former Sports Minister John O'Donoghue stated he would make €5 million available to fund the grants but when details of the proposed disbursement emerged, there was trouble written all over it.

O'Donoghue suggested the money would be in effect laundered through infrastructure grants, in his words "freeing up" the money for the GAA to give to the GPA.

This is the crux of the current difficulty and the GAA stance on the matter is perfectly reasonable.

Infrastructure grants are variable and their precise annual value isn't known because the disbursement depends on what projects are green-lighted each year.

Plainly from a GAA perspective, O'Donoghue's means of distribution would offer no guarantees that the 5 million wouldn't simply come out of whatever they would have been allocated anyway.

In the deadlock over this issue a couple of misconceptions have drifted into the public domain.

Principal among those was that the association's misgivings centred on the fear that the grants would breach policy on pay-for-play. Given the GAA had already accepted the grants in principle and had agreed schedules of payment with the GPA it was patently obvious they didn't regard the scheme as a breach of rules or ethos.

Latterly it has been equally erroneously suggested that the GAA can't have anything directly to do with the disbursement because that would be "paying the players".

Yet association president Nickey Brennan has made no secret of the fact that Croke Park would happily administer the €5 million with the assistance of the GPA were the Government to drop its convoluted preconditions and simply write the cheque.

The problem for all concerned is that the matter has become one of those issues that now means more than it's worth. The GPA have laboured long and hard to get to the threshold of having this grant scheme established and the status and recognition that would confer is now more important than the €5 million.

It may be unfair that the GAA are in their crosshairs on this, given that the association has ruled out just one potential funding vehicle but as far as the rank-and-file player is concerned the money's on the table and the GAA are squabbling over how to pay it out.

Equally it would be too much to expect account to be taken of the time frame involved. Since O'Donoghue's announcement there's been a general election, a change of government and a summer recess but to the players the money's been available for nine months.

The GPA believes Croke Park could have been more vigorous in pursuit of the funds and that's possibly true but by this stage anyone looking at the situation objectively would concede that the GAA isn't a problem if the Government is serious about this funding. It's only recently that the new minister Séamus Brennan has met with the parties - but only on a bilateral basis - yet until all three parties sit down together the matter won't be resolved.

Even privately, the GPA don't believe the funding is jeopardised by the darkening economic landscape and haven't been given the impression that Brennan is reconsidering the decision of his predecessor.

The bona fides of the Government on this issue will become apparent soon enough if they continue to insist on using infrastructure funding as the means of disbursement. Arguments that they have to adopt an oblique approach to prevent a wave of applications from other sports make no sense now that the stated intention to pay the grants has been so firmly in the public arena for nearly a year.

No one wants the players to go on strike but the Government would be the least affected party. It would be a disaster for the GAA, who will be introducing a new director general in the new year and hardly want his first task to be sorting out a players' strike.

The GPA hardly want it either given the strain its administration would place on the loyalties of members and their uncertain response to action as serious as a refusal to participate in intercounty activity once the new season starts in January.

Those of us who remain sceptical about the Government's intentions on this would accordingly advise both the players and Croke Park to bend their minds in the direction of a Plan B.