The GAA has provided no rationale for its arbitrary proposal to divideDublin in two and this half-baked idea should be rejected out of handby every Jackeen, argues Frank McDonald
Eight years ago this month, the historic county of Dublin was split in three, to create the new "counties" of Fingal, South Dublin and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, gathered around the county borough - or city, in plain language. And however arbitrary this division may have appeared, it is nonetheless an important fact of local government.
Everyone travelling to Dublin Airport will have seen the sign on the otherwise invisible boundary line welcoming them to Fingal. There's a similar sign beside Booterstown Marsh announcing that one is now entering the County of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown. South Dublin, too, has marked out its territory so that nobody can be in any doubt.
In other words, for all practical purposes, Co Dublin ceased to exist on January 1st, 1994. It lives on only in the minds of those who are either too snooty or parochial to accept numerical postal codes.
One might have imagined that this inescapable fact would have occurred to the authors of the GAA's voluminous Strategic Review. But it is only mentioned in passing before they go on to propose an even more arbitrary and seriously divisive plan to split Dublin - including the city - into two separate county boards, demarcated by the Liffey.
No rationale whatever is offered for this appalling proposal, nor is any justification put forward in Chapter 11 of the review, which deals with the Dublin "problem", for not aligning the GAA with the reality of local government in the capital. Instead, we are treated to reams of verbiage about how the proposed dispensation should operate organisationally.
Incredibly, when this issue was raised on RTÉ's Questions and Answers last Monday, it didn't even occur to Michael Smith, the man who presided over the 1994 carve-up of local government in Dublin as Minister for the Environment, that the GAA should have done the logical thing by proposing four new county boards instead of just two.
Given that inter-county rivalry is at the core of Gaelic games and that the sub-title of its own review is Enhancing Community Identity, the GAA would be doing everyone in Dublin a favour by embracing - and, indeed, replicating - the administrative division of the old county into Dublin City, Fingal, South Dublin and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown.
I remember arguing at the time of this carve-up that the three new counties would only establish their separate identities when each of them had its own GAA teams, just like Antrim, Galway, Kerry or Wexford, or any of the rest. And much as it may stick in some craws, all of our counties are legacies of a British Local Government Act.
Yet any attempt to change these county boundaries has run into stiff resistance.
The ideas of extending Waterford city into the Ferrybank area of south Kilkenny, or of Limerick city colonising part of Co Clare - in both cases, to recognise the reality of urbanisation - have been resisted because they would cut across GAA county loyalties.
Of course it must be true, as the GAA review says, that "having a single county committee responsible for the growth and development of the association in an area which hosts one-third of the population of the Republic and is administered by four local authorities, imposes an impossible task on . . .the current Dublin County Committee".
But what on earth is the logic of proposing a "Dublin North" and "Dublin South" solution, thereby reinforcing the socio-geographical chasm between the northside and the southside? Especially if the GAA's aim, as the authors of its review state, is to establish itself as a more "vibrant, active force" in Dublin's diverse sporting circles.
According to the review, the GAA "must agree and implement radical proposals which are achievable, properly resourced and which will make a major statement of intent".
However, what it has put forward is on the lines of a half-baked cottage pie - so much so that Dubliners would be entitled to think that this is yet another culchie plot.
Indeed, I believe the GAA would be making one of the biggest mistakes in its history if it defies the pre-existing county boundaries in Dublin to split the capital in two. It would make so much more sense to go for a quadripartite solution.
Imagine, for example, the welcome that would await a south Dublin football team bringing the Sam Maguire cup home to Tallaght or, more likely, a Fingal team carrying it in triumph through Swords.
There might even be a small bonfire at Merrion Gates if a camogie team from the more prim and proper Rathdown area was to win the All-Ireland.
The spectacular redevelopment of Croke Park has rightly gained enormous kudos for the GAA. Why fritter that goodwill away by cheating the people of Dublin city and its closely-related counties of the opportunity to establish a real sense of loyalty and make some sense of the local government structures inaugurated by Michael Smith in 1994?
And so, the bizarre proposal currently on offer should be rejected out of hand by everyone who still thinks of themselves as Jackeens.