Braying donkeys fail to shine a light on GAAGO - or on very much of anything really

Day 55 in the Big Bother house.

“I feel like we’ve been in this room for three weeks at this stage,” says Niamh Smyth, chairwoman of the Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport and Media.

In front of her, an afternoon with various bods from various bodies – the GAA, the FAI, the IRFU, Sport Ireland, RTÉ, Virgin, TG4, Sky, NASA, the ICA and the Tonton Macoutes. You’d forgive anyone who lost count after a while.

Deputy Smyth lays the law down early – the politicians asking questions of those who have come before them are getting four minutes apiece and not a penny more.

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“I’ll leave it up to yourselves whether you want to ask questions or make statements,” she says.

Some of them choose Door Number One and do their best to illuminate complex subjects. Some of them faceplant into Door Number Two and do nothing of the sort.

So you have the likes of Senator Michael Carrigy who laughs ruefully when Smyth reminds him he has to keep to four minutes. Initially it seems as though his laugh is meant to convey frustration, a signal that, no matter the skill of the inquisitor, four minutes is going to be nowhere near enough time to winkle out the answers deserving of a national parliament.

But then he starts talking and gives his sporting background and says bringing back Sports Stadium sounds like a fine idea and waxes about GAAGO which he thinks is a great idea and says the GAA is a 32-county sport and points out that the biggest issue is broadband and asserts that he supports a secondary competition and maybe the GAA director general could expound on why the season has condensed and why there are so many games on in such a short space of time.

In total, his statement/question/life story takes up three minutes and 29 seconds. Tom Ryan – for it is he who is being asked to answer a question THAT ANYBODY WITH THE SLIGHTEST INTEREST IN SPORT ALREADY KNOWS – gets a few sentences into his reply when Smyth apologises and says she has to move on.

Earlier, after Cork TD Christopher O’Sullivan laid out a long and involved story about a constituent whose father-in-law had to come over to the house to watch a match on GAAGO and it didn’t suit the man because he didn’t really want the in-law in the house to begin with and there was buffering and bad reception and all sorts of other problems, Smyth threw to the GAA man and said, “I’m afraid Tom you have about 30 seconds for an answer there”.

So on it goes. Mattie McGrath tells a story of an 89-year-old who had to sit in a car because he couldn’t pay into a match because it’s all cashless now. When Ryan says they have not taken cash at matches since 2013, Mattie gets indignant.

“Sure I’ve paid into matches myself!” he says.

“We haven’t done it at intercounty games in a decade,” says Ryan.

“Intercounty?!” says Mattie, outraged now. “I’m talking about club matches. South Board!”

This is one of the several times during the afternoon when you have to remind yourself that this is ostensibly supposed to be a committee meeting about the future of sports broadcasting in Ireland.

But as ever, it all-too-easily devolves into parish pump nonsense about the poor oul’ fellas sitting on the side of a mountain asking why Kerry aren’t on TV or why somebody from RTÉ made a smart remark about the state of a ground in Ardee or can GAAGO be made free to all over-65s like the free public transport.

(Actually, there could be the kernel of an idea in that somewhere).

A few of the politicians do come well-briefed, in fairness to them. Imelda Munster, who is always gimlet-eyed at these things, extracts admissions from both Peter McKenna of the GAA and Declan McBennett from RTÉ that GAAGO is operating outside the remit of their original clearance from the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission.

She also draws out the first ever official utterance from the GAA as to what the viewing figures are like for GAAGO – Ryan tells her that it’s been approximately 1.3 million for 42 games this year, ranging from 120,000 for Kerry v Tyrone down to 1,500ish for lower level games.

Shane Cassells finds out from McBennett that all GAAGO profits are put back into bidding for GAA rights. In moments like this, the worth of these committee hearings is obvious.

But mostly, it’s donkeys braying.

Cork TD Thomas Gould comes in at the end of the first session and uses his two minutes to wish the rugby lads all the best on Friday and to wish the ladies all the best in the World Cup and to say he’s been 37 years on the committee in his club and how hurling is losing to soccer and rugby and how every hurling match should be on television and did you see the save the Kilkenny goalkeeper made the other day and it hardly talked about and the Kilkenny girl got a radio and it was shocking. Shocking!

Yes it was, Deputy. Yes it was.