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Patron lashes GAA for Rule 21 stance

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

By Andrew Bushe

DUBLIN – The GAA “missed the bus” by not dropping the controversial Rule 21, which denies membership to RUC officers and the British soldiers, according to it’s patron, Archbishop Dermot Clifford of Cashel, who said that political pressure “bordering on intimidation” had been brought to bear on delegates at the special May 30 congress on the issue.

Clifford said the 800,000 strong GAA was now out of step with the whole movement toward peace and reconciliation.

“They’ll have to do some catching up,” he said. “They missed the bus. It was a glorious opportunity badly missed.

“We did say everybody had to take a risk for peace at this time. They haven’t taken that risk.

“The delegates in the North came under severe pressure from political elements and these political elements had their voice heard load and clear.

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“They had pickets outside the Burlington Hotel and there was something bordering on intimidation went on round and about at that congress.”

The GAA failed to vote rescind the rule at a meeting attended by 200 delegates on May 30.

Instead, it decided to await reforms of the RUC promised under the April 10 peace agreement. A commission under former Hong Kong Gov. Chris Patten began work last week.

He said he had felt he should be the conscience of the GAA and had written a letter to delegates urging them to lift the ban saying that “nothing but good could come from it.”

“It was an appeal to the Northern Ireland delegates in particular, to forget and forgive,” Clifford said. “I acknowledged the fact that they were the people who had borne the brunt of the Troubles for the past 30 years.

“I acknowledged that they had suffered a lot and that we down here didn’t have first hand experience of what they had gone through by way of harassment and so on.

“However, I was saying to them that a new climate exists since the Good Friday agreement. I was saying that in view that, and in view of the wider interests of our country north and south, that they would take the spirit of Good Friday – which is a spirit of reconciliation and forgiveness – and that they would make a magnanimous gesture.

“The GAA could make a very big contribution to the cause of peace of the whole island. I was saying to them it would be reciprocated on the other side. If they did this they would probably find that the RUC and British army attitudes to them would be greatly softened,” he told RTE.

Clifford said if it had been done last week it would have a great impact but doing it in a year or two it wouldn’t make any difference.

His letter was not read to the four hour meeting. He presumed this was because GAA HQ wanted to protect him as patron from bitterness if there was a split about the 99-year old ban.

He said it was a pity his letter was not read.

“I wasn’t disappointed. My disappointment was that they hadn’t followed the vision of their President Joe McDonagh and former President Jack Boothman. They were leading the GAA into the future. They were giving them an opportunity to contribute in a very, very meaningful way to the whole peace process, in a way which history would praise.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern had led calls from other leading politicians and churchmen for the ban to be dropped.

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