The single biggest change in Ireland since the GAA was founded, was the foundation of a separate, independent and democratic state in twenty-six of the thirty-two counties of this island, writes An Fear Rua ...

That change had the ‘look and feel’ of a revolution and, indeed, the achievement of a degree of Irish independence is often cited as the removal of the first brick in the crumbling edifice of the British Empire. True, the harp replaced the crown on official documents and the bottle green uniforms of the Royal Irish Constabulary were replaced by the navy blue of An Garda Siochana. But for many people, especially in rural Ireland, social and economic relationships continued undisturbed, as they had done for many decades previously. Indeed, if Bracken, Cusack and the others who met in Hayes’s hotel in Thurles in 1884 to found the GAA, were to return to rural Ireland at any time over the succeeding one hundred years or more, they would sense little real change. They would recognise the same centres of power – the publican, the solicitor, the auctioneer, the banker, the GAA club but, above all, the church and the Parish Priest.

The Catholic parish has long been established as the locus of organisation in rural Ireland, with the Parish Priest at its epicentre. In the early part of the nineteenth century, the great Emancipator and Repealer himself, Daniel O’Connell, founded modern mass democratic politics on it. Later, the Young Irelanders made it their basic unit of organisation. On, too, to Michael Davitt and the Land League and in more modern times, even the ESB took the strategic decision to take the parish as the basic area of operations for their enlightened Rural Electrification Scheme. Indeed, veterans of the Scheme ruefully recall that once they had won over the Parish Priest to electricity, the flock meekly followed.

It should be no surprise, therefore, to find that the parish is also the basic unit of the GAA and the linking of each club to a parish, and each member to their native parish (unless validly transferred), is enshrined in the Official Guide. Thus, ‘the parish’ has assumed an almost mythological aspect in the folklore of the association. In certain counties, the intricacies of the so-called Parish Rule have kept many a Runai occupied and out of mischief while increasingly, at under-age level, policing the rule has become almost a way of life for some, with movements in and out of parishes monitored more assiduously than the famous Rangers’ ground in Crossmaglen.

However, is the veritable cottage industry that has grown up around the Parish Rule in its existing form a waste of valuable time and energy? Contrary to the views of some that the rule is ‘the very lifeblood of Dis Great Association of Ours’ it is dispensed with in our large cities. Even in many counties, the rule was not observed much, or at all, until the Thirties, Forties or Fifties of the last century. In other words, for much of its existence, and across large swathes of its membership, the GAA has prospered without a Parish Rule. Whether the traditionalists like it or not, the Parish Rule could not be described as a ‘core value’ of the GAA. Its main proponents, not surprisingly, are found among the denizens of large, populous parishes who relish the prospect of whipping the smaller, less populated parishes year in, year out.

Far from being some ancient Celtic system of social organisation, parish boundaries were formally set down only in the last two hundred and fifty years by the then British administration, when eager locals were paid a shilling a day to point out the boundaries to the mappers. The ghosts of those English planters and mapmakers must surely hazard a smile at the thoughts of so many later Gaels risking life and limb on playing fields out of loyalty to some misplaced squiggles on a Cromwellian map! Can it really be that the basic unit of the GAA – like so many other institutions in Irish life - was bequeathed to us by … the British ?

Perhaps more importantly, the dull, grey, homogenous rural society so familiar to the founders of the GAA and their successors and so beloved of a certain type of backward looking individual is rapidly changing into a startling kaleidoscope of diversity. The changes are most startling and apparent in the schools. The school was once the very root of the parish, supplying generation unto generation of GAA players, with the Parish Priest ensconced as its manager. Now, a lay Board of Management has replaced the PP. Gaelscoileanna, non-denominational schools and inter-denominational schools with no clerical involvement are rapidly increasing in number. I recently heard of a school in Dublin – nominally Catholic – where twenty-seven different faiths are represented among its pupils.

For the past several years, Ireland has been going through a period of extensive and rapid demographic changes. Far from being immune to these changes, the GAA needs to recognise and analyse them and adapt accordingly. One of the association’s abiding strengths has been its ability pragmatically to adapt to change while judiciously remaining rooted in its traditions. There are now citizens of more than a hundred and sixty different nationalities living in Ireland. We also know – from the regretful pronouncements of eminent churchmen – that nominal adherence to the Catholic faith is now the norm rather than the exception. In that changing context, its seems foolhardy – not to say insensitive - for the GAA of the future to base its membership on the administrative unit of a church that is now only one in a diverse tapestry of many. How long before a GAA official asks a Muslim Irish citizen: ‘What parish d’you play for, Hassan?’

Just as importantly, there are huge population shifts within the country itself, with movements of families out of Dublin into all the Leinster counties. Many of these exiled Dubs are staunch GAA followers, but are untutored in the intricacies of the Parish Rule. Equally, many people are now settling down and raising families in parishes within the same county, but a distance away from their birthplace. Clubs in medium sized towns and inner cities have begun to struggle while clubs in hitherto rural backwaters are suddenly beginning to prosper. In other words, the predictability of rural life on which the Parish Rule rested, is gone. The sheer inflexibility of the rule and its often absurd consequences is turning many parents off and losing kids to other games that do not have the same territorial hang-ups. Disputes arising from the rule cause endless bitterness and division and, in some counties, have led to acrimonious court cases.

It is time to move on and adapt. A sensible modernisation of the rule would allow players to choose for themselves to line out for one of the following: their native parish, the parish of their mother or father, the parish where they go to school or one of the immediately surrounding parishes, without the necessity of being formally transferred. That way would still provide a brake on players hiking off to a big club that they have no close connection with, while at the same time introducing a degree of reasonable flexibility.

The above article was first published in 'High Ball' magazine and is reproduced here by kind permission of the Editor, Damian Dowds

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