GAA needs to break drink habit

THE GAA, it seems, does not wish to renew the Guinness sponsorship of the All-Ireland senior hurling championship from January 1.

This is to be welcomed. Multi-sponsors for both the football and hurling championships is now apparently the preferred format for the future.

This decision will ensure impressionable young people, adults with drink problems, and particularly alcoholics in recovery, will no longer be exposed to the relentless, aggressive, intrusive and pseudo-glamorous marketing which has become a feature of sponsorship over the years.

This is a moral as well as a health issue — and the GAA should aim for the high moral ground at all times.

Ireland led the world in dealing effectively with the problems associated with passive smoking.

Now, the GAA has a wonderful opportunity to lead the way and become the first sporting body to break the link completely between sport and alcohol sponsorship.

It would help to dispel the perception that the association’s only criterion in choosing sponsors is the amount of money on offer.

The Government should be proactive in encouraging the ending of the dependency of sports organisations on alcohol sponsorship. It should be offering special funding to compensate in the event of a shortfall in financial support from alternative sources of sponsorship.

The GAA will be subject to intense pressure from vested interests in the drinks and advertising industry, and the media generally, not to take this historic step.

If the GAA can withstand this pressure and take this momentous decision, other sporting bodies would be compelled over time to follow its example, either by legislation or through the force of public opinion. This would be an achievement which would equal anything else that has happened in the GAA’s recent history.

The lack of support for former GAA president Dr Michael Loftus on this issue up to now is difficult to understand when it is clear that every reference to the All-Ireland senior hurling championship across all media — newspapers, radio, TV, etc — is also a promotion for the sale of Guinness products.

The silence from the GAA management committee and the central council is deafening.

Let the debate begin.

Donal Curtin

59 Mayorstone Drive

Limerick