Child protection in the GAA

I'd imagine that the GAA child protection measures that were in place 30 or 40 years ago were equally as non-existent as they were in other sporting organisations back then. It's only relatively recently that child protection became a thing, mostly in the last 10 - 20 years.

Their controls should be pretty good now as there is legislation in place but nothing is foolproof.

Will there be more cases like the one in the OP? I'd imagine so. Every large organisation will have had their share of bad people years ago. But hopefully they will be legacy cases and the current safeguarding rules will help keep the kids playing today safe and out of harms way.

It's a very complex issue, it means that childless men would feel quite uncomfortable in volunteering their coaching services as they know they would be viewed as potential pedophiles. The reality is that only father's can be GAA coaches nowadays.

Fecking hell, sounds like a bureaucratic nightmare imposed by people hell bent on vilifying others as paedophiles. All this so some youngfellas can kick a ball around a field

There’s no truth in it at all! 😳 It’s only that particular posters paranoid nonsense.

The coaches that participated were predominantly male (79%), aged between 25 – 54 (85.7%), and experienced, with 89.8% active for more than five years and 90% of whom have received some coaching qualification.

It found also that 70% of those involved were a parent of a player in their club and 26% of whom had little or no playing experience themselves.

Coaches in Gaelic games were reported as being very active: 39.8% are currently involved in coaching in multiple codes and a significant majority of whom do so on more than one day each week (78.3%).

Encouragingly for the governing bodies, some 63.1% of respondents said they intended to continue coaching for at least the next two years.

Of the potential threats to their continued involvement, the demands of work and family life were the most cited – almost three in four people said it was the issue most likely to force them to stop.

Of greater concern for the GAA, LGFA and Camogie Association will be the 35% who cited scheduling of competitions as a major challenge and the 28.3% of whom stated that ‘poor games opportunities/structures’ were a concern.

https://m.independent.ie/sport/gaelic-games/gaa-survey-concludes-way-below-par-female-coaching-ratio-of-20-41228653.html

Do you mean only parents of kids do coach or only parents of kids are allowed to coach?

that isn't what i asked.

that is the question I asked. thank you.