Report's call to repeal Rule 21 throws spotlight, and pressure, back on GAA

The Patten report's call for the abolition of the GAA's Rule 21 - which prohibits members of the security forces from membership of the association - means that an issue which the GAA might have preferred to have avoided is back on centre stage. Sixteen months ago it looked as if the matter had been laid to rest. The special congress held to consider deletion of the contentious rule ended in landmark equivocation.

GAA president Mr Joe McDonagh had a month earlier informed the annual congress that the Belfast Agreement had persuaded him that the time was right to repeal Rule 21.

"I believe we must now take a leap of faith in support of the process," he said in April 1998. "I believe we must now play our part in the evolution of peace and equity, even if it means some risk. I believe that we must show vision, courage, leadership and unity and not stand idly by."

Between then and the May special congress which had been specifically convened to consider Rule 21's removal, the Belfast Agreement was ratified in two referendums by nearly three-quarters of those voting on the island.

Yet those opposed to abolition won the day and prevented the idea receiving the two-thirds majority necessary for dropping the rule from the GAA's Official Guide. The rebuff to Mr McDonagh was thinly veiled in a statement issued after the in camera congress ended and which the president himself had to recite.

"Recognising that the concept of an exclusion rule has no relevance in a situation where the national and cultural traditions of the people of all Ireland are equally recognised and in response to the British-Irish peace agreement, approved in referenda by the people of all Ireland, Cumann Luthcleas Gael pledges its intent to delete Rule 21 from its official guide when effective steps are taken to implement the amended structures and policing arrangements envisaged in the British-Irish peace agreement."

Despite the rhetoric of reconciliation, the GAA hasn't exactly distinguished itself since the heady days of the referendums. As mentioned, during the high-water mark of post-Good Friday euphoria, the congress refused to budge on Rule 21.

Later it emerged that the GAA, for all its posturing on the policing of Northern Ireland, had refused to make a submission to the Patten commission when it was gathering opinions. This was an embarrassment for Croke Park, whose hands were tied by the impossibility of achieving consensus on such a submission.

Earlier this year, in April, it was announced that the military occupation of Crossmaglen Rangers' premises in south Armagh - a longstanding grievance between the GAA and the British authorities - was to be phased out.

Now that the Patten report has been released, the spotlight is back on the GAA, but there is nothing in the association's demeanour to suggest it is any closer to embracing change.

The mechanics of Patten's release appears to have irritated Croke Park - as is implicit in the testy reference to "a report it has not yet been issued with".

Aside from that, there is a feeling that the ball is not necessarily back in the GAA's court. With the uncertainty about the establishment of an executive, and with Senator George Mitchell's review still in progress, there is no certainty about the extent - if any - to which the Patten proposals will be implemented.

Should reform of the RUC be put on the long finger, it will facilitate a similar process within the GAA in relation to the abolition of Rule 21.

If we set aside the theoretical considerations which impinge on two issues as affected by symbolism as reforming the RUC and removing Rule 21, there remain very practical considerations which may prevent the GAA hiding behind the North's political stasis.

At his press conference yesterday, Mr Patten spoke about the desirability of "removing a discouragement" to police recruitment within the nationalist community.

If the notional Northern Ireland Police Service is to be effective, it needs to attract cross-community support. How is it going to do that with the biggest voluntary organisation on the nationalist side prohibiting its members from joining?

Secondly, and more pressingly, there will be considerable political pressure in relation to this. As an alteration to the status quo, the Patten report necessarily makes more demands on the unionist community than on nationalists. Consequently, both governments will be anxious that unionists be seen to get something from the security shake-up.

The GAA is generally impervious to political and public pressure.

This is not merely obduracy on Croke Park's part. As Joe McDonagh's chastening experience last year shows, the association's apparatchiks (as distinct from rank and file) are notoriously unbiddable.

Whatever happens in the short term, the chance to prove itself a force for conciliation is rapidly vanishing for the GAA.