GAELIC GAMES: Taoiseach Bertie Ahern last night launched the Dublin County Board's strategic initiative at Croke Park. Costing more than €7 million over three years it is the most ambitious development plan ever devised for the county, reports Seán Moran, GAA Correspondent
The product of two years' negotiation between Dublin, the Leinster Council and the GAA, the initiative aims to divide the county into regions, loosely based on existing local authority areas, and focus its efforts on raising the profile of Gaelic games in schools, improving recruitment for clubs and establishing a structure for developing elite talent.
"Today is about establishing the foundations for the future," said an Taoiseach. "It is about securing the foothold of Gaelic games in this city and county.
"It is about providing our young people with every opportunity to master and participate in games that are integral to our identity as a people.
"Dublin is now home to one quarter of our country's population. Young people under the age of 18 make up almost 300,000. Such a population has naturally put an added premium on land and facilities across the county.
"I am particularly heartened to see the focus on disadvantaged areas." He also paid tribute to the county board, the Leinster Council and Croke Park for their support of the initiative.
He was responding to the presentation by Dublin Chief Executive John Costello, in the course of which the problems facing Dublin were set out.
The decline in volunteerism, increased competition from other sports and the price of land had all presented obstacles.
As a result, the GAA was not getting into primary schools at anything like an ideal rate. He showed statistics of nine to 16 year-olds in the county, which indicated 16.63 per cent of boys and 5.32 per cent of girls were playing football while 10.84 per cent of boys and 4.06 per cent of girls played hurling or camogie.
The strategy for dealing with the challenge will be based on devolving work to regional areas, where the focus will be sharper on servicing the schools in those regions and identifying the elite talent. Regions have yet to be finalised, but will largely correspond to local authority areas.
Kevin O'Shaughnessy has been appointed Strategic Programme Manager and he heads the initiative. Reporting to him - in hierarchical order - will be the regional development officers, the hurling development officer and the games promotion officers.
GAA president Seán Kelly, who chaired the joint-committee that agreed these initiatives, said that the plans would "make Dublin what it should be - the greatest GAA county in Ireland".
He praised the Leinster Council for their generosity in backing the initiative, as they also had to take into account 11 other counties in the province.
"It was well put by my predecessor Peter Quinn," he said, "when addressing the SRC (Strategic Review Committee) congress. 'Dublin is not a national problem,' he declared, 'it's a national opportunity'."
Addressing the question of breaking Dublin into two counties - the controversial proposal advanced by the SRC nearly three years ago - Kelly dismissed it, but in ambiguous fashion.
"No one's suggesting that Dublin should be divided in two. That's hogwash. No one's saying that for the moment."
