The GAA has said it will not be able to respond to the British government's revised implementation plan for police reform.
The plan calls for the GAA to "immediately" take steps to repeal rule 21, which prohibits members of the RUC and British army from being members of the association.
Despite a similar call for repeal in the Patten report on policing reform, a spokesman for the GAA in Dublin yesterday said it had only been made aware of the new call by The Irish Times.
He said that for the time being the association's position would remain as it had been since June 1998.
In 1998 the GAA resolved to remove rule 21 once "effective steps are taken to implement the amended structures and policing arrangements envisaged in the British-Irish Agreement".
The GAA spokesman said the association had not been "afforded the courtesy or the luxury" of seeing the revised plan.
A special congress could be called at any time but it was "unfair of anybody to ask us to make a judgment in the context of a report that we haven't seen and that has only been out for a matter of hours".
The Northern Ireland Police Federation, which represents most serving RUC officers, said it believed many of the key issues affecting its members had been addressed by the implementation plan.
While it said it had still to study the plan in detail, the federation welcomed the fact that serving officers would not have to swear a new oath, that there would be no phasing out of the full-time reserve until after a security review, and that there would be "no recruitment of terrorists or ex-terrorists to the new police service".
The federation's vice-chairman, Mr Jimmy Spratt, welcomed the fact that many of the report's recommendations were dependent on an improved security situation, but warned: "We will be concerned that there is no weakening of this qualification."
Mr Spratt called on all the political parties to give their support to the new policing board. "If they fail to do so now after such exhaustive debate and the implementation of many recommendations which are painful to us, then it can only be evidence that they want to continue to use policing as a political football," he said.
The RUC Chief Constable said he hoped the document would be well received.
"If the plan receives widespread cross-community support, I have no doubt that it will be a blueprint for effective policing," Sir Ronnie Flanagan said.
"The RUC stands ready to energetically play its part in the implementation of those parts of the plan for which it has responsibility.
"It is my dear hope that the cross-community support will be forthcoming," he said.
The Alliance Party's justice spokesman, Dr Stephen Farry, said that with the publication of the revised plan the SDLP had "no excuse for not signing up to the Police Board or urging young nationalists to join the new Police Service".
Speaking after its publication, Dr Farry said: "This plan represents substantial movement from the British government on the issue of policing. For some time Alliance has been concerned that the nature of policing has been overly determined by the need to establish nationalist consent rather than what is necessary for fair and proper policing.
"The time has now come for the SDLP to finally make a decision if they are indeed still an independent political party. They have run out of excuses."
He added: "With the continued threat to the rule of law from paramilitaries on both sides and continued disorder on the streets, they can no longer string this out with any credibility."
The Campaign for the Administration of Justice was also asked to comment on the plan but declined to do so.
