The GAA should update its rules to embrace the challenges of living in a modern, multicultural Ireland and should take a more proactive approach towards combating sectarianism and racism, one of the association's leading administrators has urged.
Cork County Board secretary Frank Murphy said that the association can, as it has in the past, continue to strengthen Ireland's national identity by fostering and promoting Gaelic games and culture among all people on the island, as well in Irish communities abroad.
"Its rules should also change to reflect and embrace the challenges and opportunities of modern, multicultural Ireland. The rule of the association being 'non-party political and non-sectarian' is now rather narrow in its terminology and scope.
"It should state that the association is both anti-sectarian and anti-racist, and be worded in a more proactive sense in welcoming people, irrespective of their religious persuasions, political opinions or cultural backgrounds to share with us in fulfilling the association's objectives."
Mr Murphy, who was speaking at the annual Gen Liam Lynch commemoration at Kilcrumper cemetery in Fermoy to remember the republican leader killed in the Civil War, pointed out that members of the GAA had played a proud and active part in the fight for Irish freedom.
Outlining the role of the GAA in the broad nationalist movement in the years up to 1916 and the Easter Rising, Mr Murphy went on to detail the involvement of many members of the association in Sinn Féin and the Irish Volunteers and later in the War of Independence.
"Many GAA players entered the Volunteer movement - some teams joining en bloc," said Mr Murphy, recalling that among the players who joined was Liam Lynch's close friend Michael Fitzgerald of Fermoy, who died on the 67th day of his hunger strike in Cork Prison.
After the Civil War, the GAA went on to play an important part in healing division and in bringing opposite parties together, said Mr Murphy, who pointed out that Lynch, while steadfastly opposed to the Treaty, worked tirelessly to avoid civil war.
"He strove to maintain republican unity . . . even in the circumstances of executions, he ordered no reprisals," said Mr Murphy, who wondered what Lynch's position would have been towards the Belfast Agreement.
"Would Liam Lynch have approved of such an agreement which, given the belligerence of the British government and the intransigence of the unionist population in the six counties, would have been unattainable in his time?
"Living in a different era and circumstances, it is difficult to be certain. One fundamentally objectionable feature of the Treaty to Liam Lynch was the Irish Free State's inclusion in the British empire," said Mr Murphy.
"Given Liam Lynch's desire for unity of approach, I believe he would have accepted the Good Friday agreement, but without deviating from his ultimate objective - a united Irish Republic," he told the commemoration, which attracted more than 300 people.
