Kettle: Funding cut plan ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’

Dublin chairman Andy Kettle insists the county will strongly resist any attempts to cut its funding and redistribute it to other counties.

Kettle confirmed the Irish Examiner’s story from last week on a GAA report into how funding of counties could be better managed which suggested a reduction in what Dublin receive. GAA president Liam O’Neill admitted in the wake of Dublin’s new multi-million euro sponsorship deal with AIG last October that, ‘it may well change our thinking on how we finance counties, across the board, to equalise things’.

Kettle revealed that included in the current report is a suggestion that a special €1m payment, ring fenced for the promotion of Gaelic games in Dublin — provided for by the Irish Sports Council but distributed by the GAA — be broken up and partly diverted elsewhere.