Disciplinary procedures: GAA president Seán Kelly has publicly backed the idea of an independent body to take charge of disciplinary matters. Seán Moran reports.

All senior intercounty league and championship issues are currently the responsibility of the Games Administration Committee, which has been criticised for its track record during the first 12 months of its three-year term.

Asked to comment on the complaints of inconsistency against the GAC, Kelly was quick to point out that he has very little say in the composition of the committee: "First, I didn't put the GAC together. It's the one committee that I have no say in apart from appointing the chairman, which I did, putting Tony O'Keeffe in charge. Maybe that's a difficulty because if you had the opportunity to put people you wanted there, it might be easier to get a truly independent body.

"At the moment they're over-burdened and hardly have any time for long-term planning and strategic policy.

"I was down in Australia with the International Rules and met the AFL disciplinary commission. Its chair is a QC and for each hearing he picks two or three others from a panel of independent members to sit with him.

"Nobody knows who's going to sit in a particular case and because none of them are elected, they don't have to go around making themselves popular.

"Until we do that the situation won't be ideal. It will have to come in eventually and it's the right thing to do."

Kelly also said he would be appointing "very soon" the committee established by last month's Congress to look into the workings of the GAC. A related matter raised at Congress was the idea floated some time ago by both Kelly and his GAC chair, Tony O'Keeffe, that the remit of the committee be split into the areas of fixtures and discipline.

The advantage of the Australian system is that, as well as being independent and impartial, it moves quickly to deal with issues that arise from matches on a weekly basis. The GAC struggles to organise weekly meetings given that its membership is drawn from the four provinces and although it manages to meet regularly during the championship season, it is plainly a burden on voluntary officials.

Under the AFL system certain offences are reported by the umpire or referee to the disciplinary tribunal and those that escape the attention of match officials are picked up by a video investigator and also reported.

A proposal based on that structure was made in an appendix to the annual Congress report. In his Games Development Overview, the GAA's head of games, Pat Daly, suggested "a small group of independent people, chaired by a solicitor or barrister, is appointed and meets each Monday or Tuesday evening to deal with disciplinary issues arising from the weekend's senior intercounty games (this presupposes that extensive use is made of the most up-to-date technology and communication resources)."

The bracketed reference is to the desirability of hearing players on video rather than obliging them to make round trips of up to 10 hours to attend hearings.

Daly's proposal goes on: "An Investigation Work Group of two or three people could be appointed to deal with issues not reported by referees."