Munster CEO Kieran Leddy: Municipal facilities must host GAA

Ahead of Friday's Munster GAA Annual Convention, provincial chief executive Kieran Leddy has made the case for an organisational departure from tradition and for the shared use of municipal facilities in urban areas with other sporting bodies.

Such examples currently exist, but the likes of Fethard Town Park in Tipperary which is used by the GAA and the IRFU, remains an exception to the rule.

In his report, before delegates descend on Ballygarry Estate Hotel and Spa in Tralee on Friday, Leddy wrote: "Multisport facilities built by funding from the taxpayer need to include facilities for the playing of Gaelic games.

"In the past, our desire to build our own facilities was very strong, but in the modern world, this is not always practical.

"Land in urban areas is scarce now, so facilities need to take on a multi-sport model.

"So good has the GAA been at providing its own facilities, that local authorities have built municipal facilities that have excluded Gaelic games, simply because the playing areas provided in these municipal facilities is too small to cater for Gaelic games.

"A notion is being peddled that the Government has put far too much money into Gaelic games to the detriment of other sports.

"This is not true. Government funding over the years has been a fraction of what the GAA itself has invested in its own facilities."

Leddy argued that the current county centres of excellence in Munster were built with minimal Government support and have been mainly funded by the GAA.

"Given our past desire to own all our own grounds, we now find ourselves with an ageing inter-county stadium infrastructure, with significant finance needed to maintain these facilities, and a far bigger sum needed to modernise them.

"The cost of the