Tapes, telephony and television — how they are entwined on this isle

SOMEDAY, someone is going to write a play or a novel about Shattergate or Gardagate or Tapegate, or whatever the right nickname for the current controversy suits.

Then maybe we’ll all finally understand who said what and to whom, and what happened as a consequence of all that. Or, just possibly, the Commission of Enquiry might get to the bottom of it all first.

Although he may not be a household name, there are few figures among the Irish judiciary with greater authority than Niall Fennelly. He has been a distinguished member of the Supreme Court for thirteen years or so, and before that one of the best-known senior counsels in the country. Most people who know him would have a lot of confidence that by appointing him to conduct the Commission of Enquiry into the Garda taping controversy, the Government (whether it wants to or not!), is ensuring that we’ll all know the truth in the end.

Of course, there are now so many conspiracy theories, and conspiracy theorists, that it’s not going to be possible, if the entire Supreme Court signed the Commission of Enquiry report, to satisfy them. We’ve talked about how this entire controversy has been politically mishandled from the beginning, and that’s going to ensure that the facts are never going to be allowed to get in the way of a good juicy political rumour. For that reason alone, this controversy is likely to dog the government until its dying day.

So there’ll be plenty of time to write about political skulduggery. I wanted, for a change this week, to write something solid, decent, middle of the road, and broadly non-controversial. So I chose the GAA, an organisation of which I’ve always been a great admirer. And then they go and sign a deal with Sky, and the country, it seems, goes mad.

I wasn’t raised an admirer of the GAA. It would be more honest to say that I was raised almost entirely ignorant, and therefore dismissive, of our national games. My dad was a rugby player and fan, and that was good enough for me. It wasn’t until much later in life that the capacity of hurling and football to thrill and inspire began to dawn on me – and later still that I came to recognise the astonishing role the GAA plays in a great many aspects of national life.

There are parts of Ireland, especially outside the pale, where the GAA is the glue that holds communities together. That doesn’t just apply to sport, although the passionate tribalism attached to football and hurling in towns throughout Wicklow, for instance, is something to behold. It’s also the case that anyone writing a handbook on community development in Ireland would quickly realise that the GAA routinely makes a contribution well beyond the world of sport.

Beyond all that, the GAA has developed a central place in Ireland’s history, culture and folklore. Even the most dim-witted rugby fanatic like me will never forget the magic of that famous day in February 2007 when Ireland hammered England in Croke Park. What made that day so special was the place, the location of Bloody Sunday, and the deep-seated folk memory of an atrocity from long ago. It was a day when the GAA helped the entire country to transcend itself.

As I’ve gotten older and more appreciative of what the GAA is, and how it works, although I’m still a total outsider, it has seemed to me that one of the other ways in which they can instruct the rest of us, is in how they make their decisions. They seem to move slowly and deliberately a lot of the time, with more consultation and participation than you’ll see in any other sport. Imagine players and spectators being consulted by the rugby authorities about, say, the rules around the scrum?

As a result, their decisions, in the main, seem to have two broad characteristics. First, they stand the test of time. And secondly, the decision-making process reveals that the people who understand the GAA best are the people entrusted with its running.

Over the years there has been many a passionate argument about decisions made by the GAA. The ban on foreign players divided the GAA, but so did the debate about whether it should be lifted. The decision to keep Croke Park closed to foreign games was seen as begrudgery by many outside the GAA, but the decision to remove that ban required endless debate and careful stewarding within the organisation.

So I guess it was inevitable that if the GAA chose to do a deal with Sky, it was bound to be controversial. I thought at first that the controversy would centre on the “old enemy” argument, but although that may be “under the skin” of the argument, it doesn’t seem to be what it’s about.

And of course there’d be a lot of irony if members of the GAA rose up in patriotic rebellion against Sky in the same month that Martin McGuinness went to dinner with Her Majesty in Buckingham Palace.

No, it seems, from the outside looking in, that this debate is once more about the character of the GAA. About amateur versus professional. About local versus international. About commercial versus community. Those on the anti-Sky side of the argument seem to believe that the GAA has sold out, and has abandoned all the core values for a mess of potage.

I CAN’T see that. Back in the late 1970s (so it’s not that long ago!), I lived in a house on a hill outside Cork city. We had a big television – a big box of a thing, you’d stagger under the weight of it – that we had to position on the front windowsill of the house. Why? Because you’d get the best TV reception if you could get those rabbit’s ears as close as possible to a straight line from the TV mast on top of Mullaghanish Mountain.

If you wanted to watch the All-Ireland final (or the Wimbledon final), on that one channel, you had to pray that you had the television set at the right angle and that there wouldn’t be thunder or lightning in the air between us and the mountain, because that would play havoc with the reception.

If you had told me back then that I could watch TV on hundreds of channels on my television, or even on my phone, and that I could see sport from all corners of the globe at all hours of the day and night, I’d have laughed at you. But that’s the way it is now.

On the one hand, the GAA has no choice but to position itself closer to the heart of all that. But on the other, it represents an amazing opportunity to develop a more global audience for, and ultimately more global participation in, our national games. In those circumstances, the real sell out would be the decision to stand still. Not for the first time, the GAA has been wiser than its critics.