Tom Ryan issues warning as inter-county spend hits €44m

GAA director general Tom Ryan warned the spend on inter-county teams would have to be curtailed in the years ahead.

In the GAA's Annual report, it was disclosed that the collective profits of county boards had nosedived in 2024, down to €1.8m from €4.1m in 2023, with the sharp fall largely attributed to the spend on inter-county set-ups.

The cost of preparing inter-county teams came in at €44m for 2024.

Speaking at the launch of the report, Ryan said it was the responsibility of both counties and the GAA centrally to help curtail inter-county spending and admitted that it was a trend that needed to be tackled in the next decade.

"That's a responsibility that sits jointly between counties and ourselves," Ryan said of the inter-county spend.

"A lot of it will be around a common commitment we have with the GPA at the moment, around contact hours for players and making the lot of players a bit more reasonable. That's not purely from a cost point of view, it's from the point of view of the effort they have to expend to reach the level they're at now.

"It's difficult to see how the level we have now, where that's going to take us in 5-10 years time if we don't arrest it.

"So, what it means is: Spending less, expending less effort, a collective acknowledgement on the part of everybody that we centralise procurement and put some of the burden on this table here (Central Council), whether that be travel or related ancillary services around times. It just means thinking about things differently.

"If I knew how we were going to solve it, it would have been solved by now.

"There's an awful lot that's really, really good about the inter-county season. We need to be careful that we don't damage it when we undertake that.

"But we're at the stage