Young people from non-Irish backgrounds much less likely to participate in GAA, UCC research finds

East Asian students were 87% less likely to play Gaelic football and 95% less likely to play hurling or camogie through school compared to their Irish peers, while African and North American students were about two thirds less likely to play Gaelic football through school. Picture: iStock

Young people from non-Irish backgrounds are significantly less likely to participate in GAA due to challenges in finding pathways into the sport, a combined study by UCC and UL has found.

The research, published in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport by Wesley O'Brien (UCC) along with Kwok Ng and Catherine Woods from UL, found there were statistically considerably more Irish people who participated in Gaelic football than all the non-Irish nationality groups.