The news that next month's GAA Congress in Killarney will not after all be debating the use of Croke Park is the latest twist in a bizarre controversy stretching back three years.

There was great surprise that the debate in 2001 came as close as it did to backing the reformers' view that the ground should either be made available to other sports, or at least that the matter should be left in the hands of Central Council rather than annual congress.

But much of the publicity centred on the £60,000,000 thrown on the table by the Government the night before a debate in which the financial need to open Croke Park would be a major argument.

As the proposer of the motion that day, Tommy Kenoy, points out, the need to cite Rule 5 when amending Rule 42 - one of the grounds for disallowing eight motions on the subject this year - was communicated to Roscommon by virtually the same Motions Committee that have felt unable to do so in the past two years.

All past presidents, bar Peter Quinn, Mick Loftus and Paddy Buggy, sat in on the committee meeting last week: Séamus Ó Riain, Pat Fanning, Con Murphy, Paddy McFlynn, Jack Boothman, Joe McDonagh and Seán McCague.

The committee, overwhelmingly comprised of former presidents, is by its nature a conservative body so to that extent its decision to boot the debate to touch isn't surprising.

But the prospects of the debate on reforming Rule 42 being successful this year were considered by most observers to be remote.

Yet the view that this was a simple matter of motions being badly drafted and leaving the vetting body with no choice is at odds with the history of this issue.

Last year it was said that a Clare motion, taken on the floor of the 2002 Congress, was out of order. By explanation, then president SeáMcCague said he had pointed out his reservations about the motion's legality at the time but decided to take it anyway in the interests of debate.

But the motion was precisely the same as the one debated without quibble when proposed by Roscommon in 2001. It also passed the vetting process of the Motions Committee in 2002 before McCague entered his caveat on the floor of congress.

With this background of reticence about even hearing the matter debated, all eight counties who put forward motions were on absolute notice that they needed to put their proposals in order and Central Council made available its Bye Laws Sub-committee to assist in this.

Yet despite all sorts of consultation, the motions were still ruled out of order. This is plainly a disaster for congress. In recent years the annual event - the supreme rule making body of the GAA - has already come under scrutiny because of the poor quality of its debates and the farcical inability to set an agenda of valid motions.

Now an issue of sufficient importance to attract the interest of 25 per cent of the counties and one that has been a talking point for the past three years is tossed aside despite the efforts of the clubs and counties involved and the obviously genuine attempts to ensure the motions were in order.

In the circumstances it's very hard to know why the Motions Committee's discretionary power under Rule 78 to set motions in order wasn't exercised given the conflicting opinions.

Anyway, the logic of the committee's argument is hard to follow. Rule 5, for instance, gets frequently quoted as a provision affected by any amendment to Rule 42.

But all it states is: "The Association and its resources shall be used for and dedicated solely to the above (general) aims".

Surely if Congress decides that leasing an otherwise idle Croke Park, or permitting Central Council to do so, is what it wishes, it is accepting that such an initiative is in keeping with the aims of the organisation.

The other Rules cited, 43, 44 and 142 - concerning the vesting of GAA property, penalties for breaching Rules 42 and 43 and, strangely, disciplinary procedures - have with the exception of 43, a fairly tangential relevance.

Other motivations will be discussed. It is known from a highly placed source that there was concern within Croke Park that any debate on the subject might be rancorous and damaging to the association's image.

At a time when the GAA is about to enter discussion with the Government in respect of enhanced funding, there was also a school of thought that having a Rule 42 debate hanging over such discussions like the sword of Damocles would have been tactically ill-judged. On the one hand, were Rule 42 changed that would be discarding a trump.

On the other, only yesterday a Government source remarked privately that significant funding would be hard to justify politically if the gates of Croke Park remained closed. That reticence would only intensify were the decision to be re-affirmed after a bitter and splenetic debate.

So there were good administrative reasons for hoping the imminent debate would go away. Whether that had any influence on the Motions Committee's deliberations is actually doubtful but the end result won't be entirely unwelcome.

None the less it comes at the high cost of undermining the democratic principles that underpin the association - the right of a club and county to have their concerns debated. In the process Congress has become even more discredited as a representative, decision-making body. That will have to be addressed.