On Gaelic Games:The season has turned. A burst of good weather has accompanied all of the usual markers for this time of the year, the sunshine brightening the road ahead that leads to next month's championship.

Club champions have been crowned, the play-offs for the National Leagues are being sorted out and within a few days Congress will have taken place - the traditional peaking of the capacity for off-field issues to interfere with games-related ones.

There remains however a couple of items that could do with spring cleaning before the championship takes over our attentions and both of them have received an airing in the past week.

There was more entrenchment on the Tallaght stadium development with the Minister restating his steadfast opposition to the GAA's involvement in the development on RTÉ Radio's This Week programme on Sunday.

It remains as hard as ever to discern why he views this matter in such rigorous terms.

The only clue is to be found in his insistence on radio that in the words he quoted from the Scottish-born Canadian poet Robert Service: "a promise made is a debt unpaid . . ."

The quotation comes from The Cremation of Sam McGee, a macabre narrative about two gold prospectors freezing in Yukon Territory during the Klondyke gold rush of the late 19th century. Sam McGee from Tennessee is dying and his dread of death is deepened by the thought of an icy grave so with his demise imminent he asks that his companion cremate him.

At considerable length the poem details the frozen journey and the search for a suitable facility in which to honour that undertaking.

It's likely the Minister didn't intend to compare his commitment to Shamrock Rovers to that of having to cart around a frozen corpse until he could find somewhere to dispose of it but he could be forgiven for feeling, as the controversy heads in the direction of a judicial review, some of the anguish apparent in the stanza he chose to quote.

"Now a promise made is a debt unpaid and the trail has its own stern code./ In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load./ In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,/ Howled out their woes to the homeless snows - O God! How I loathed the thing."

Anyway, according to the Minister the reason for his insistence that senior Gaelic games not be accommodated is a) that he has promised a home for Shamrock Rovers b) that the Genesis report proposed a soccer stadium on the south side of Dublin for two National League clubs and c) that the capacity of the Tallaght development would be adversely affected by the increased pitch size necessary for the inclusion of football and hurling.

Given that the promise to Rovers isn't compromised by what the Dublin County Board consider as a secondary tenancy and that, as put to the minister by RTÉ's Gavin Jennings, the Genesis recommendation has not even medium-term relevance since St Patrick's Athletic secured their future in Inchicore the only substantive argument relates to the capacity of the ground.

Yet even this isn't clear cut because Thomas Davis, the local GAA club that was granted the judicial review, maintain that a specially-commissioned architect's report shows that the stadium can be developed around a GAA pitch without affecting the capacity, as claimed by the Minister, or disturbing the structure already partly built.

Presumably the dimensions of the site can be ascertained during the judicial review if not before and what appears - amidst all the recrimination and what-aboutery - to be the core issue adjudicated.

This is a delicate time in the relationship between the outgoing Government and the GAA, which has in overall terms been a significant beneficiary in terms of the disbursement of public funds. The association can reasonably maintain that any money it gets has been well spent but an unsympathetic sports minister would make life more difficult.

Aside from Tallaght another issue has emerged within the last week - that of the Gaelic Players Association allowances. Since Croke Park has reached agreement with the players' union on the best means of spending the €5 million the Minister promised he would make available for the scheme last January, the ball is now in his court.

The accord is the result of a significant piece of diplomacy by the GAA and GPA, albeit one that is causing rumblings among the more conservative members of the association, who are concerned at any hint of breaching the amateur status rules. Players stand to receive between €1,500 and €2,500 depending how long their intercounty season lasts and payable on the basis of receipts for expenditure on their chosen sport. Realistically the GAA had to reach agreement once grants were offered to players but getting the matter resolved was important and allows the next item on the joint agenda - that of GPA recognition - to be addressed.

But it would be unwise for players to make too many plans on the basis of their grant cheques just yet.

The problem is that the idea is running out of time.

For a start the general election takes place next month. This year's championship gets under way even earlier, making an introduction of the scheme before the dissolution of the current Dáil unlikely.

Once the election intervenes it's hard to believe that the idea isn't in difficulties. Even if Fianna Fáil are returned, John O'Donoghue probably won't remain in the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism.

This is significant, as the undertaking he gave was a personal one and one that attracts little enthusiasm within the department or even the Irish Sports Council.

Their perspective is obvious and underlined by the reaction of Cumann Peil na mBan, asking that women footballers also be considered for this funding. There will be a likely avalanche of similar applications, as foreseen by the GPA, which has been working away indefatigably trying to find a way of extending the tax breaks available to elite professional athletes to elite amateurs, but not exactly helpful to the Gaelic players' cause.

At a stage when the economy is showing signs of flagging and with a nurses' strike the latest symptom of a creaking health system, it won't require an accomplished government spinmeister to whip up hostility to the idea of paying out money to high-profile sports performers.

The main hope for the GPA must be that in his last weeks in office the Minister feels as strongly about his undertaking to them as he does about his perceived Tallaght commitments.