Two things.
1. That adds up to over a million a year in salaries, before administration costs, travel costs, and other overheads. To be honest with you, I’m sick to f**king death of the rising costs of competing in GAA for clubs and members, as a large part of these increases is simply to cover administrator salaries... and the first rule of being a paid administrator is you will want paid support to share the workload.
2. The biggest problems we face with the officiating of games is that a) the rules on tackling are open to interpretation, and b) there is a culture in our game whereby cheating isn’t just acceptable, it’s demanded by the fans. So a referee, unfortunately, rarely gets to referee a game, but instead he’s a the pantomime villain. Paid referees can’t fix these problems.