MASS MIGRATION to the eastern seaboard, decimating rural communities and resulting in urban overload, represents a clear ‘existential threat’ to the GAA.

That’s the warning of National Demographics Committee chairman Benny Hurl, who was speaking at the launch of the GAA report, ‘No One Shouted Stop – Until Now’.

Nearly half the population of the island now lives on the eastern seaboard, in an area stretching from ‘Larne to Wexford’, yet just 18% of the GAA’s clubs are located here.

At some city clubs in the region, and in the large towns, facilities aren’t available to meet growing numbers, meaning burnt out volunteers and coaches and players being turned away or giving up.

Meanwhile, in the rural areas where people are leaving, communities are dying, and GAA clubs are regularly struggling to field teams, often joining up with neighbouring clubs to keep operating.

The example was given of an area in South Kerry where All-Ireland-winning manager Jack O’Connor is from. Out of 13 primary schools in the region, just 83 junior infants enrolled for the current school year. And yet the overall population in Kerry is up as numbers swell in the big towns.

“The GAA faces an existential threat,” said Hurl. “And that’s not me being overdramatic, I’m not exaggerating. And I don’t want to be doom and gloom. But in rural Ireland, we face monumental challenges. And in urban Ireland, we face monumental challenges.”

GAA President Jarlath Burns said the time to act on the issue was decades ago.

“We were warned about this 50 years ago by the McNamee Commission — and now we have the consequences,” said the Armagh man.

He also said that the more recently produced National Spatial Strategy, if implemented, could have helped avoid some of the current problems.

“I think the place where we are now, I don’t know if anybody planned for us to get here,” said Burns. “You can look at various inaction by the government, or you could say there were various government policies with regard to the locating of industries in particular places.

“I would have felt myself that the National Spatial Strategy of the early 2000s was one of the best documents that we ever produced. But unfortunately, it really withered because it became linked in with the government budget of that time.”

Burns cited a warning in the GAA’s demographics report that if action isn’t taken now, some clubs won’t survive.

“So there are 1,610 clubs in Ireland, and many of these will not survive the decade,” he said, outlining the worst-case scenario. “So we watched, and we sat back while villages lost their bank, then the bus stop, then the Garda station, then the school, then the post office, then the shop. Now all that is left in these dwindling communities is the GAA club. But even those are not sustainable to the end of the decade, as the report says. Without people, we cannot sustain our clubs.”

Despite the worrying trends and the fact that 52% of children aged below five now live in just six areas — Dublin, Belfast, Down, Kildare, Galway and Cork — Tyrone man Hurl said that he is actually ‘fierce optimistic’ about making meaningful change.

Among the report’s recommendations is targeted growth in new and existing clubs, pilot initiatives in Kildare and Kerry addressing urban and rural problems, influencing planning policies and providing modified games programmes to accommodate clubs with small numbers.

The committee has also drawn up two motions for Congress. The first proposes to make it easier for new clubs to gain official GAA status, while the second recommends that existing clubs with small numbers be accommodated with championship competitions, possibly dropping down to as low as nine or 11-a-side.

“These things will hopefully go some way towards ensuring that the smallest, the weakest, will continue to exist, albeit in a different, smaller-sided game,” said Hurl. “That’s what clubs have said they would like, and I think it’s incumbent on us to give county committees the flexibility to do that.”

Burns said that, in the big towns and cities, new clubs may have to be formed. He gave the example of Ballygunner in Waterford, home to the current Munster club hurling champions.

“Ballygunner now is so, so big,” said Burns. “We saw they won the Munster final at the weekend. They have won the Intermediate A final so many times that it’s affecting the Senior and Intermediate grades in Waterford. And that’s not Ballygunner’s fault; they’re just in an area where there’s a population explosion.

“A solution to that problem that is being presented by Port Lairge is that Ballygunner have two Division 1 teams. That means we could see Ballygunner playing Ballygunner in the final in Waterford. That is the unintended consequence of that which could very well happen.

“Is that what we want? People in Ballygunner, I know, will say, like John Fenton (Midleton chairman in Cork) said, ‘We probably need a new club in our area’. But the nature of our association is that I can’t say, ‘Okay, let’s set up a new club.’ People in Ballygunner have to make that decision themselves. And we just have to wait on it. And that is definitely a glitch in our own system.”

Burns said that the GAA is obliged to take the lead on the issue.

“Every sport that organises itself is going to see that there are fewer people in some areas and too many people in other areas,” he said. “But I don’t think they have the same, with the best will in the world, social conscience or community accountability as the GAA has.

“The GAA is in us, our Gaelic games are in us. And that’s why I think it falls on us to be the first people with the voice to say, ‘Look, let’s talk about this, let’s reflect on it and let’s see can we do something about it’.”

– Updated 10.14am: An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to Belfast as a county; it is a city.