GPA founder Donal O’Neill: GAA could create its own community currency

Such is the network and social capital of the organisation in Ireland that O’Neill believes it can monetise its power and assists its members in providing loans and other services

Sun, 14 Feb, 2021 - 18:01

John Fogarty

The GAA has the potential to create its own community currency, GPA founder Donal O’Neill has claimed.

Such is the network and social capital of the organisation in Ireland that O’Neill believes it can monetise its power and assists its members in providing loans and other services.

The Armagh native explains: “There’s a currency in Switzerland called the wir. I have friends who are actuaries working in top banking firms and I’ve asked them if they have heard about it and they’ve said no. It’s reckoned it’s the reason Switzerland has never had a recession. It was set up by six businessmen in Switzerland after The Great Depression.

“The GAA has that power. The credit union system showed non-profit financial organisations are very powerful but when they reached for their banking licences they collapsed because the common bond structure that holds them together disappeared.”

O’Neill knows making the jump from being a cultural organisation to a financial cooperative would be unacceptable to many but he argues the GAA is not maximising itself.

“The GAA could do so much more. It could create so much wealth with its infrastructure and resources if it stepped into something like that. Parallel currencies… the wir is said to generate CHF 10 billion (€9.25bn) a year in commercial trade in Switzerland. That would spread the wealth and even things out. You could take that next step and go harder and become absolutely visionary and shake things up but of course that won’t happen because Central Banks and governments don’t love it.”

Producer of documentaries such as “Cereal Killers” and “Extra-Time”, a feature which chartered the cardiac health of the Down and Meath teams that played in the 1991 All-Ireland final, South Africa-based O’Neill is currently making a movie about Covid-19.