REPORT TO ANNUAL CONGRESS: GAA director general Liam Mulvihill has made a strong plea for public service broadcasting. Expressing concern at "the apparent lack of interest among the general public in their (RTÉ's) plight", he went on to say: "This is unfortunate and dangerous for all who value the retention of the vestiges of our uniqueness and our separate identity."

Mulvihill, a former member of the RTÉ Authority, was speaking at the launch of his annual report, which will be presented to next month's congress in Dublin.

Allowing that RTÉ "had done nothing to win friends in many spheres over the years and that it seemed to be particularly hard on on Irish cultural organisations, including the GAA (a reference he illustrated by reference to what he called a "very critical programme" about the GAA broadcast in the association's centenary year), he went on: "but we would be well advised to think very seriously before depriving ourselves of the wealth of talent that has been built up over the years in RTÉ".

Among other topics addressed was the new qualifier system in the All-Ireland championships. Praising the success of last year's inaugural staging of the format, he nevertheless instanced a couple of areas of concern: ". . . there have been indications from some counties that the club scene has suffered badly as a result . . . This would be my major caveat at this point about an experiment which otherwise surpassed expectations in every other way."

On the subject of drug testing, he opposed suggestions that testing be extended to minor or club players. He said that these levels were "recreational" and not properly within the remit of such procedures. But he defended the testing programme as agreed with the Irish Sports Council.

"We are not doing this just to comply with someone else's wishes. We want to do this because it's right." He confirmed that out-of-competition testing on GAA players would be confined to training sessions rather than at work or at home.

The only substantial reference to the amateurism issue was in a section regretting that the Year of the Volunteer hadn't been used more vigorously "to highlight the role played by voluntary people in its (GAA's) development.

"It is ironic and unfortunate that this (semi-professionalism) was the media focus at a time when we should have been recognising the marvellous achievements of our organisation through its volunteers."

Mulvihill expressed some scepticism about the need for the GAA to sustain 36 committees and sub-committees at central level and also about the unchanging composition of these bodies. The recurrence of the same names, he believed, created a "tendency to tackle the same things in the same old way year after year".

He also remarked that 2001 had been "one of the worst years for some time" in relation to attacks on GAA property in Northern Ireland and that there had also been "numerous instances of threats and attacks".