The Gaelic Players Association, the GAA and the Minister for Sport Séamus Brennan are expected to meet shortly to discuss the vexed issue of player grants.

An application from Croke Park for the meeting is being considered by the Department.

"It has to happen sooner rather than later," according the GPA chief executive Dessie Farrell, "and maybe the Taoiseach's interest in the matter will help speed things up."

Farrell has already been in contact with the Taoiseach to emphasise how feelings are running high within the players' union over the continuing failure to find a means of distributing the €5,000,000 in player welfare grants promised by the previous minister for sport John O'Donoghue before the recent general election.

The main problem centres on the vehicle for distributing the money. O'Donoghue wanted to make it available to the GAA as additional infrastructure grants in order to "free up" association funds for the players.

The GAA are opposed to this on two grounds: one that it would involved direct payment to players, which is a sensitive area given the amateur status rules, and that infrastructure funds are not set amounts.

Farrell believes the second concern can be circumvented. "I've a degree of sympathy for the GAA in this, as it is a convoluted system but the Government has gone out of its way to guarantee that this sum would be additional funding to what they would normally get. That could be monitored by looking at what was granted the previous year."

The GAA's stance on this remains that, as infrastructural grants are not fixed sums and given applications for these funds vary from year to year, there would be great difficulty ringfencing what the association was due under the conventional funding and what would constitute an extra €5,000,000.

The GPA are conducting a number of consultations with members on the matter. These are due to run for a few more weeks on Monday evenings, with the Leinster meeting having taken place earlier this week.

"Players can't understand how €5,000,000 has been allocated by Government and caught up in red tape and bureaucracy," according to Farrell, who says that one of the solutions proposed by the GPA has been to make the Irish Sports Council the gatekeeper for the funds.

It is known, however, that the ISC aren't keen to involve themselves in a scheme involving more than twice the total funds they currently administer for elite athletes.

Their apprehensions, shared by the Government, are that should this go ahead there would be a disorderly queue of other sports looking for similar funding.

Farrell, however, draws a distinction: "These are our national, indigenous games, which contribute to the heritage and culture of the country, the sporting equivalent of something that is already recognised by Government in the area of the arts with funding for the Aosdána scheme."

New minister Brennan has not expressed any opinions so far on the matter but the freshness of his perspective should assist whatever chances there are of finding a resolution, as relations between his predecessor and the GAA had become fractious.

Meanwhile, Liam Sheedy, expected to be ratified as Tipperary's new senior hurling manager next Tuesday, has enlisted the services of 1991 All-Ireland medallist Michael Ryan as a selector. The two played together in 1989 when Tipperary won the All-Ireland under-21 title and two years later, Ryan was a member of the senior team which defeated Kilkenny in the senior final.

From the Upperchurch-Drombane club, Ryan also won a McGrath Cup football medal with Tipperary in 1989.

Sheedy will also be assisted by coach Eamonn O'Shea from Kilruane McDonaghs and one more selector, who has yet to be confirmed.

It has been announced that former Dublin and Tipperary hurler Jimmy Kennedy of Kildangan passed away on Wednesday night.

A member of the latter county's three-in-a-row All-Ireland teams of 1949-51, he also won a NHL medal in 1950 and a Railway Cup the same year.

Earlier in his career he won a Fitzgibbon Cup medal with UCD in 1948, the same year that he helped the Dublin hurlers to win a Leinster title before losing the All-Ireland to Waterford. He also captained Leinster in the Railway Cup.