Ferris calls for scrapping of GAA game

The organisers of a Gaelic football match between members of the Dáil and the Northern Ireland police today faced calls for it to be scrapped.

Sinn Fein’s Martin Ferris claimed the match involving Irish TDs and Senators should not go ahead in Dublin next Tuesday for a number of reasons including the alleged collusion of police in Northern Ireland in loyalist paramilitary killings.

“It is entirely inappropriate for TDs and Senators to take part in such an event at this point in time,” the Kerry North TD argued.

“The excerpts from the Stevens Report which detail the appalling level of complicity on the part of the RUC/PSNI in the murders of nationalists prove that until there is proper reform of the police in the Six Counties they should not be granted the kind of respectability which such an event would confer.

“Apart from that, members of the PSNI and the British army continue to harass members and supporters of the GAA who are taking part in Association activities.

“Indeed the most glaring example of this continues to be the illegal and totally unwarranted occupation by the British Army of part of the Crossmaglen pitch in South Armagh.

“Until such interference ceases, and until there is a properly reformed and acceptable police force in the Six Counties it is not appropriate that the GAA and its facilities should be used to promote the premature rehabilitation of the PSNI“.

Sinn Fein has been extremely critical of police reforms in Northern Ireland, insisting the British government has not gone far enough to meet nationalist and republican expectations.

The party has refused to take seats on the Policing Board which was set up to hold the Police Service of Northern Ireland accountable and will not urge its supporters to join the PSNI.

However following the endorsement of new policing structures by the nationalist SDLP, the Government and Catholic bishops, the Gaelic Athletic Association in November 2001 ended its controversial ban on members of the security forces playing Gaelic football and hurling.

A Gaelic football team was set up by the Police Service of Northern Ireland which played its first game last October against the gardaí.

The garda team beat their Northern Ireland counterparts by seven points in a game watched Ulster Security Minister Jane Kennedy, PSNI Chief Constable Hugh Orde and Garda Commissioner Pat Byrne.

Next week’s Gaelic football match has been organised by Jimmy Deenihan, a Fine Gael TD from Kerry North who represented his county at the highest levels of the sport..

Mr Deenihan captained the All-Ireland Championship winning Kerry team in 1981.