GAA President Seán Kelly has stated his intention to propose rule changes for next year's congress in order to allow the Central Disciplinary Committee to resume using video evidence to review refereeing decisions which inadequately punish foul play.

This follows on from last week's ruling of the Disputes Resolution Authority in relation to the suspension of Tyrone's Ryan McMenamin.

The DRA ruling was that incidents already dealt with by the referee could not be revisited by the CDC, although it didn't rule out the use of video evidence for the consideration of incidents not spotted by the match official.

"It's important to realise that the DRA found nothing wrong with the procedures of the CDC. The import of the decision is basically that the power to change yellow-card offences to red will have to be enshrined in rule. Next year's congress will deal with that."

Kelly also said that the GAA would discuss with the DRA the necessary solutions to the flaw in the rules as determined by the authority. "We will put certain viewpoints to them and discuss it with our own legal people. Issues need to be thrashed out and loopholes closed.

"At last we're getting pointers as to what needs to be done with the rules and we will be able to put these to congress."

He summarised the DRA decision and its epilogue at the weekend's Central Council meeting as, "short-term embarrassment leading to long-term satisfaction".

The President also revealed that despite the uncertainty created by the weekend's decision by Central Council not to proceed with the suspension of Armagh's Paul McGrane, he had urged the CDC to continue to use video evidence.

"I said to them after the Central Council meeting to keep going," said Kelly. "The DRA pointed out that the CDC had the power to deal with video evidence."

Whereas McMenamin and Armagh player Ciarán McKeever had earned their suspensions for offences already dealt with by the match referee, McGrane's incident had been missed and was therefore still a permissible topic of video investigation.

None the less Central Council decided to drop McGrane's suspension in a decision that caused some surprise, but Kelly denied that it created an atmosphere of panic in relation to disciplinary issues.

"I'm not really concerned. That'll pan out in time. Look at what's happened already. There's been a huge improvement with the splitting of the GAC and that represents progress."

Responding to the suggestion that the DRA decision could be remedied by a decision of Central Council rather than a full rule change, the President felt that such a course of action would be impractical. "There's no point at this stage. The All-Irelands would be nearly over by the time that could be decided and it would be better to take stock of the situation and get our legal people involved with a view to copper fastening the issue at next year's congress."

Meanwhile, Joe Rice, the solicitor who was representing the Armagh players in their appeal to the DRA, has placed a fundamental question over the GAA's entire disciplinary apparatus.

Although neither of his clients had to proceed with that appeal, Rice said that the whole establishment of the new disciplinary procedures was open to question.

"Where the CDC gets its role to deal with discipline we're not sure. It seems to us that the Management Committee has to have delegated this function to the CDC and we say that that is a fundamental breach of law.

"Anybody at this stage would say that the very jurisdiction of the CDC should be capable of challenge."

Rice also criticised the introduction of DRA as bringing an unnecessary legality to the GAA's appeals process.

"The grave error in bringing in the DRA to take the courts out of this, to keep it simple is in bringing in a 15-person panel full of lawyers. And they want to know then why the county boards are going to run to people like me. Normally the county boards would have dealt with it themselves under the old committee.

"The lawyers for the CDC and the DRA are well aware looking at this that the whole procedure is collapsible. It's in utter confusion and chaos."

Kelly, however, dismissed this criticism of the CDC when it was put to him. "I strongly disagree with that. Authority for the CDC comes from the decision of last April's congress.

"The proposals establishing it were gone through at length by lawyers and I believe that it's watertight.

"There may be anomalies within some of the association's procedures and the DRA are helping in identifying them. They will be addressed but nowhere has the DRA found fault with the CDC."