An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business
Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-12
============================================================

Mike Kennelly (FG), Labour Panel

I want to raise the ugly side of the GAA. On 24 May, Sunday week, the biggest game of the All-Ireland football championships this year will be on in Killarney when Kerry play Donegal. The GAA has again put championship football behind a bloody paywall. Ordinary rural people with issues in Kerry and Donegal, and indeed the whole country, are being excluded from viewing this spectacular game of football. The very people who built the GAA are being excluded from watching it, including elderly people living alone at home, people in hospitals, people with disabilities and people in rural Ireland who do not have smart TVs, smartphones, laptops or any other instrument to stream the game.
The men and women who gave decades of their lives to the GAA, the volunteers who cut the grass, washed the jerseys, sold the tickets, made the tea and sandwiches and stood at gates in the lashing rain so that our games could survive and be played still pay their TV licence. They have supported the GAA all their lives and now when Kerry and Donegal are lighting up the championship they are told they have to subscribe, stream, download apps and pay extra money just to watch their own county teams. This is a total disgrace. Gaelic football is beautiful again. Look at the crowds. Last Sunday over 32,690 people were in Fitzgerald Stadium in Killarney to watch Kerry play Cork. Nearly 25,000 went to Dr. Hyde Park to watch a historic win for Roscommon.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-05-12/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:55+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-12