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« on: March 21, 2008, 01:15:37 PM »
From todays Examiner; Seems even though he has left office he still craves publicity and his love affair with himsef and the media contnues.
Lynch rejects Kelly credit claims
By Jim O’Sullivan
THE GAA has reacted strongly to comments from Sean Kelly on a number of current issues expressed in an interview earlier in the week, with PRO Danny Lynch saying yesterday that he “shouldn’t be taking credit” for the negotiation of the government grants scheme.
And in relation to the International Rules Series, which is expected to resume later this year, he contradicted the former President’s view that the series should never have been abandoned following the violence in the second test in Croke Park in October 2006.
Describing comments attributed to Mr Kelly about the grants scheme as ‘rather surprising and disingenuous’, he said he could also confirm that he (Kelly) had not spoken to either Director-General Paraic Duffy or current President Nickey Brennan and advised them how the grants should be paid to the players.
Outlining the chronological order of how the grants situation evolved, Mr Lynch pointed out that then President Sean McCague issued a statement in response to the tax break initiative for professional sports people introduced by Charlie McCreevy (in 2002) when he was Minister for Finance.
“In it, Sean McCague bemoaned the fact that professional players were getting special breaks from the Government in a financial context and that GAA players who made a major contribution were not,” he said.
“That is where all this started. During Sean Kelly’s term of office, it progressed nowhere. The increase in mileage which Sean Kelly refers to as happening in his term was a part of a package of proposals developed in Sean McCague’s time, when he appointed a committee under the chairmanship of the late Gerry Brady, (Dublin’s Central Council delegate) to examine player welfare issues. It just happened fortuitously that Sean Kelly was there at his first Central Council meeting, when this proposal could be put to Central Council and approved. But it happened on Sean McCague’s watch and I think that Mr Kelly shouldn’t be taking credit for it.
“In Sean Kelly’s own presidency, there was much toing and froing as regards the grants issue or the players awards issue, but nothing materialised. In fact it wasn’t until Nickey Brennan set up a committee which included people like Senator Joe O’Toole, the former INTO general secretary and Con Hogan the former Tipperary County Chairman and myself to progress matters. It is they who discussed it over a two-year period — and it took two years — with the Government and with the GPA and with the GAA’s own constituency, where there have been three Central Council meetings to bring it to the stage where it was announced this week.
“I found Sean Kelly getting involved at this point in time and appearing to want to take credit indirectly for a potential satisfactory solution to this — remember it has to be sanctioned by Congress — to be amazing.
“He also refers to the International Rules in the statements attributed to him — that in his view it should never have been suspended and (we) should have gone back to the status quo immediately. I’d like to ask him, is he seriously suggesting that the violence that occurred here last October was acceptable to him, to the GAA constituency or the broader public?
“And is he seriously suggesting that the concessions that the Australians made, most notably that the suspension system will now apply and transfer into their own premiership, would have been conceded? Players, everybody, stated that the only way the series would be resumed would be if players were protected and if new measures were put in place to ensure that there would be discipline in the future.
“That wouldn’t have happened if the series had immediately resumed.
“Sean Kelly, I suppose, is maybe out of the loop a bit in the sense that he hasn’t been President of the GAA for up to two years and has his own brief in terms of the Irish Sports Council and the Irish Sports Institute.
“I just felt that there has been a considerable amount of innuendo and suggestion on various issues and that I should put the record straight.’’
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An bhfuil seans ar bith ar Gadaí na Caoraigh atá gan bua ar bith sa sraith seo. Cé nach raibh siad ach cúpla pointí chun tosaigh in gcoinne Aontraim bhí bearna mór idir na foirne maidir le luas, cumhacht agus scil. Níl morán eolas agam faoi foireann an Lú ach tá toraidh reasunta maith acu go dtí seo agus beidh siad rogha na cotianta don cluiche seo. 