By Niall Gartland

Child safeguarding is one of the GAA’s most important responsibilities, but is the Association asking too much of the volunteers expected to deliver it?

That is the question posed by Omagh solicitor and Tyrone Camogie Children’s Officer Conor Sally, who believes the current system places unrealistic demands on grassroots volunteers, leaves clubs exposed to confusion and complaint, and is ultimately setting well-intentioned people up to fail.

He argues that the rules surrounding safeguarding are ‘excessive, poorly defined and expose the association to tenuous complaints that would never stand up to scrutiny in a court of law’.

“We do have good aims in the official guide governing child protection but I don’t believe that we have the adequate tools to deal with it, firstly in terms of the onerous responsibilities that we’re placing on volunteers – it’s very difficult for volunteers to grasp what is and isn’t child safeguarding when you’re getting into legal principles as to whether or not it ticks the appropriate box.

“Secondly our code of behaviour and our child protection handbook and guides leave a lot to be desired. They’re full of colourful language but they’re not very clear and precise.

“The difficulty is two-fold: They’re not up to scratch when an incident occurs but as well as that, a lot of people are using child safeguarding as a vehicle upon which to achieve other means.

“Everything comes under the child safeguarding umbrella and some people reach for it in spurious circumstances.

“I would suggest that an awful lot of school complaints and GAA complaints come under the umbrella of child safeguarding in circumstances where it may not be a child safeguarding matter at all.”

Sally is particularly troubled by Rule 1.11 (b) of the GAA’s Official Guide, which states the association ‘shall respect the ‘rights, wishes and feelings’ of children. He believes that such a loose definition exposes the GAA to complaints that ‘border on the preposterous’.

He said, “The official guide says that the Association shall take all practical steps to protect children from all forms of abuse, harm, discrimination or degrading treatment.

“There’s obviously nothing wrong with that, but now they’ve got a caveat saying that they shall respect their rights, wishes and feelings – and in the GAA world, ‘shall’ means ‘must.’

“We’re setting ourselves up to failure because you can’t respect everyone’s wishes and feelings. If a 14-year-old child wants to play for their club’s senior football team and that’s their wish, under that rule we’re supposed to respect that wish, but we can’t because it’s simply not practical.”

He added, “If you look at the court system, yes you take on board the wishes and feelings of children, but you don’t automatically give them what their wishes and feelings are. You take them into consideration, and that’s it. The GAA needs to change the phraseology because at the moment it’s simply not up to scratch.”

Sally also highlighted the more recent introduction of adult safeguarding in the wake of allegations of serious domestic abuse by former Derry manager Rory Gallagher in May 2023.

In Sally’s mind it was completely rushed through and, conceptually, is no more than a copy-and-paste of child safeguarding.

“Adult safeguarding was completely rushed through and they totally copied child safeguarding – and if you go to the official guide, it says that Central Council shall have in place a code of conduct for the safeguarding of adults. We’re now in August 2026, 18 months on from the annual congress where it was introduced, and if you click the link on the GAA website for the code of conduct for adult behaviour, it says, oops, that page can’t be found. So as officers within clubs and counties, you’re supposed to abide by the rules of the GAA, but those rules are nowhere to be seen.”

He continued, “If you look at the Rory Gallagher case, the introduction of adult safeguarding was described as flying an airplane before the plane was actually built. I think it’s a very pertinent analogy.”

In essence, Sally believes that the GAA has set itself up to failure.

The Association has, perhaps inadvertently, positioned itself as the nation’s moral police, but even the best-laid plans sometimes cause more problems than they solve.

“We incorporate every aspect of the community in every single parish all across Ireland and this is where adult and child safeguarding becomes extremely relevant.

“However, we can’t as an organisation be responsible for everything within the community!

“It sometimes feels that we dip our toes into solving all these things – crime, domestic abuse, drugs, road safety – for the betterment of society, but we can’t as an organisation be responsible for everything within the community.

“If you look at adult and child safeguarding and all the regulations placed upon the GAA, we’re setting ourselves up to fail.

“The chairperson of a GAA club in a particular town and village can’t be responsible for everything that happens in that community. They need the protection of others. We’ve just gone too far with the whole thing.”