Presumably the President is to attend the All-Ireland finals, those great celebrations of Irish culture and Irish athleticism, as always. And as always, there will be a great atmosphere of carnival and festivity, with the vast majority of the crowd not worrying too much about politics or the broader implications of what the GAA does or says.
But it is surely time to. It is simply intolerable that the Government continues to financially support and to permit presidential endorsement of an organisation that boycotts and marginalises members of the Northern security forces, even as it declines to condemn terrorism or exclude terrorists from its ranks. To my mind this has not been acceptable for a very long time indeed; but of course my mind is not anybody else's, and I have long since learned that few people felt as I did: that terrorists must be hounded, marginalised, boycotted and rejected in every way - socially, politically and legally.
A way back
More tentative, conciliatory, affable counsels prevailed; and prevailed through atrocity upon atrocity, bestiality upon bestiality, decade upon decade, so that it must have seemed to those at the cutting edge of homicide that there was nothing they would do that would bring about their final and total marginalisation. Always there seemed to be a way back to respectability and a promise of amnesty, no matter what infamy they were guilty of.
By inertia and moral equivocation, this culture was permitted to prosper and grow; and though certain elements in Sinn Fein/IRA were learning that the war had to be stopped, there remained others who saw no reason to end it. Was it not the case that violence resumed saw violence rewarded, endlessly, repeatedly, from 1972 onwards? Violence wrested concessions from democrats, yet concessions still did not bring peace - only more war, more suffering, more hand-wringing, more bafflement. And throughout this Republic, a kind of moral anaesthesia nulled normally honourable sensibilities.
How else could decent, peace-loving members of the GAA remain members of an organisation which had voted its backing for "the struggle for national liberation"? How could Dublin Corporation annually permit the Mansion House to be used for Sinn Fein ard-fheiseanna, at which masked men read out the war report from the IRA? How else could a deservedly popular and humane doctor like Jim McDaid publicly celebrate the release of a known IRA terrorist? How else could our legal establishment watch, apparently unperturbed, as our extradition courts became playthings of wily counsel, and ruthless terrorists could walk free from the cells that incredibly brave gardai had risked their lives to put them in? How else could so many decent and honourable journalists seek extenuation, mitigation, circumstantial justification for deeds which could have been culled from a history of the Third Reich?
Reward, not isolation
Terrorists were met with reward for their activities, not isolation, not contempt, not scorn. How reassuring it must be to know that no matter what they did - bombing Remembrance Sunday in Enniskillen, say, or chaining men to car-bombs and forcing them to drive them to their doom, or slaughtering innocents in a fish-shop or lining up a dozen Protestants and shooting them - the largest cultural and sporting organisation in the country would not merely not condemn them, but would instead prefer to marginalise and ostracise those who were trying to defeat them. How very reassuring indeed.
OK, so today there are no GAA votes of support for the "struggle for national liberation". The ban, however, on the RUC and the Royal Irish Regiment remains, though of course there is no ban on the authors of the Omagh holocaust, no ban on the "Real IRA", no ban on knee-cappers, no ban on those have buried a widowed mother by moonlight while her orphan children waited vainly and alone for months for her safe return, no ban on those who hold still the secrets of a dozen secret graves or more, no ban on those who have bombed Northern Ireland senseless.
Our Garda Commissioner, Pat Byrne, regularly meets Ronnie Flanagan, the head of the RUC - two democratically accountable men who are defenders of the rule of law and guardians of civilisation's gate.
They lead forces without which this island would have long since passed into the custody of savages. Yet this State, presidentially and financially, supports an organisation which boycotts one of these forces. Is this tolerable? It is not.
Denounce the ban
Now, nobody in their right mind would say the RUC does not need reform; but nobody in their right mind would prefer the rule of PIRA, INLA, CIRA or RIRA to that of the existing RUC. If the GAA wants to keep its ban on RUC members, it may of course do so. And equally the Government should in return decline financial support or presidential presence at future GAA matches; and until the GAA takes a vote on this issue again, the Government might at least publicly denounce the ban.
After the holocaust of August 15th, equivocation is capitulation.
There must now be no hiding place, not merely for the authors of Omagh but also, and quite as importantly, for the attitudes which made possible that atrocity and the fascist idiocy of IRA violence throughout these past tormented decades. Participation in public life requires from us all a refutation of violence and a support for the rule of law; it is the least we owe the dead and maimed of Omagh.