Mayo LGFA questions GAA’s appetite for integration

Mayo LGFA have released a powerful statement calling for the integration of all three Gaelic Games organisations.

The proposed integration of the amalgamation of the GAA, Camogie and LGFA, which all three associations voted for in 2024 and confirmed in 2027, received a shocking blow earlier this month with the resignation of Dr Mary McAleese, the independent chair of the Steering Group on Integration, following the revelation that the GAA could not commit to a full integration by 2027.

The Director General of the GAA Tom Ryan has said ‘organisational structures’ are behind the delay, with the initial timescale deemed ‘a little too ambitious’ while rejecting accusations of misogyny in the organisation.

However, Mayo LGFA has questioned the appetite for the integration, saying in their statement that no meeting of the county’s Integration Committee took place this year.

The County Integration Committee involves monthly meetings between two people from each association, an independent chair, with minutes to be returned to Croke Park.

“In Mayo, no such meeting has taken place in 2026. Not one. No minutes have been returned. As far as we can establish, that is true across this entire province and most of the country,” said Mayo LGFA in a wide-ranging statement issued on Sunday evening.

Mayo LGFA have also rejected the ideas that increased costs and lack of attendance are reasons to hold off any integration. They have said that while worth every penny, the €1.35million spent on team administration by Mayo GAA in 2025 is 4.7 times the annual expenditure of the entire Mayo LGFA association, which caters for 7,015 members in 36 clubs and five inter-county teams.

“Until this season, every LGFA senior, intermediate and junior championship game in County Mayo was fixed for 11 o’clock on a Sunday morning. That was our slot. If you were a reporter you could attend precisely one match. If your club had a junior team and a senior team you had to pick one daughter over another,” read the statement, which also criticised the resistance to sharing facilities as well as the lack of incentive of the commitment required of inter-county players.

“What does Mayo LGFA own? No pitch, no astro, no clubhouse, no office, no storage container, no shed.

“Our senior county players receive €20 a week towards nutrition during the inter-county season. Their mileage is capped. This year’s training camp was one night in Enniscrone. This is what the LGFA can currently provide for them. It is not remotely what they are worth.

“There are women in Mayo talented enough to play senior inter-county football who have decided not to, and the reason is not that they stopped loving it. The cost is just too high.

“46 Irish women are on AFLW club lists this season, and Mayo supplies more of them than anywhere else. Sarah Rowe, Niamh and Grace Kelly, Rachel Kearns, Dayna Finn and Saoirse Lally are now playing football professionally on the other side of the world. Just not our football. We are all too aware they are coming for more.

“It is hard to argue that our players are not elite athletes when a professional sport keeps flying around the globe to recruit them.”