Catherine Drea: It had been a glorious weekend for women’s sport...

It had been a glorious weekend for women’s sport. The world was in awe of Ireland throwing a huge celebration, probably one of the biggest ever, for Katie Taylor. Katie has been the most decorated and celebrated sportsperson that Ireland has ever produced and she is a woman!

Wow, were we proud. Now to be honest, I am not a boxing fan, but like everyone else in the country I am a huge Katie fan! Her dignity, her commitment, her incredible resilience. It’s hard to believe that even in the Ireland of her youth, boxing as a sport was not permitted for girls. She resorted to dressing up as a boy to be allowed to train and by her own determination got the rules changed so that girls could not only train but even compete at the highest level.

Croke Park, the hallowed ground of the GAA, was the magnificent venue for this occasion and the world watched on in admiration. What a show!

So when I woke up a few days later to hear that the same GAA was now backtracking on the 2027 date for full integration of women’s and men’s sports, I could not believe my ears. In case you missed it, the GAA members voted by 98% to fully integrate men's and women’s Gaelic sports by including the two women’s organisations, the Camogie Association and the Ladies Gaelic Football Association in a process to achieve full equality.

I listened to the GAA Director General Tom Ryan that morning and heard him say that one of the main issues was something to do with the structures that had been proposed by the Integration Group. Unfortunately, he then said that he wouldn’t bore us with the details. Maybe what he missed was that women around the country were glued to his interview and far from being bored we wanted all the details!

Oh lads the whole situation brought me back as you can imagine! Structures and management? Dear oh dear, far too much information for the woolly headed women of Ireland who were baffled by such talk. But according to Tom Ryan, apparently the GAA are still committed to something called “equity” rather than equality! Well now who is baffled! What on earth was he talking about?

Naturally, as was always the case in the olden days, there was another difficult bloody woman behind it all. Sure we all knew there had to be! Even though Dr Mary McAleese had worked on this integration project with the leaders of each of the three organisations for almost four years completing the plan, the management committee of the GAA “a body, quite frankly, that was less than impressive and very disappointing to me as a long-term GAA supporter”, seemed to be refusing at the final fence.

So then I went and listened to the full interview that Mary McAleese gave to RTÉ. I could sense the deep frustration, anger and hurt in her descriptions of what had unfolded. Meanwhile, Jarlath Burns, President of the GAA, went on the News at 1 to tell us that “Mary did well”, which wasn’t exactly a resounding endorsement. Maybe “Mary did well” is the new woke version of Mary is in fact one of those bloody difficult women, as they used to say when some of us early agitators tried to break down doors just to get into the room.

The whole situation seemed to be fraught with a lack of understanding and bold thinking. Many of the women players who were promised equality are growing older and even their younger sisters are now feeling that they too will never see integration while still in their prime. It was a dream. It was a hope. More than that it was a completed plan.

To so many women in Gaelic sports, the integration plan meant everything to them. As Dr McAleese said to RTÉ, "The document they (the GAA) produced yesterday wittered on about how they continued to support integration and they were going to do all sorts of things to support integration, except that they weren't actually going to do anything because they've blocked our progress, they've blocked our plan, and they have no other plan currently. So it looks like going back to the drawing board.” 

My generation of girls missed out on this level of participation in sport. In the last few decades sport has become crucial for the development of skills and even physical health in our girls. The epidemic of osteoporosis and other frailty conditions of older women will also be hugely enhanced by girls getting stronger by playing sport seriously.

Katie Taylor both contributed to and benefited from the equal inclusion of girls in boxing. In the week that Ireland cheered her on for one last time, this debacle sends a very negative message to all the women in Gaelic sports.

We women didn’t campaign for equality for decades to arrive at a place where full equality in an Irish organisation like the GAA could be diluted. For that reason I think that Mary McAleese had absolutely no other option than to blow the whistle on what she called a block to progress. The management committee of the GAA literally pulled the rug out from under her and the other members of the Integration Group.

The GAA is an incredible organisation. The role that it plays in the lives of communities in Ireland is beyond comparison, but the time for integration is now.