Pay for play: How Cork's Siamsa opened GAA stadiums as music venues 

In advance of RTÉ documentary How Ireland Rocked the 80s, Colm O'Callaghan looks at the development of a fruitful relationship between music promoters and GAA stadium management 

Don McLean on stage with a fan at Siamsa Cois Laoi. Picture: Irish Examiner Archive 

The report of the McNamee Commission, a body that looked at how the GAA conducted its affairs and outlined a possible future for the association, was published in December, 1971. 

At the GAA’s annual Congress eight years later, director general Seán Ó Síocháin, told delegates that "the McNamee Commission had crystallised much of the new thinking in the association" which, he said, was now acting "in a bigger, better, more positive and more professional way". His thinking might have been prompted by events in his native Cork, where the construction of Páirc Uí Chaoimh, which was opened in 1976, left a debt of over £1m.