Liam O’Neill, who was the president of the GAA from 2012-15, died recently.

The Laois native served in the role with great diligence and a sense of collaboration; the greater good was always what came first.

On departing the office, however, there was one thing that he would like to have advanced.

“I wanted to bring the GAA, ladies’ football and the camogie associations together under one umbrella but it didn’t happen,” he said.

“That would be my biggest regret, that we didn’t manage to achieve it. For some reason there was a bit of mistrust.”

An oft-repeated line by Liam was that, if Gaelic games were only beginning now, any new entity would cater for male and female players with scarcely a second thought given to any other notion.

He was right, of course, but the reality is that a variety of social issues influenced how and why we ended up with two different governing bodies for women’s and girls’ codes where the men’s equivalents came under the one heading. Of course, there is something of an irony, too, in the fact that the GAA includes handball and rounders, both of which deal with male and female activity with no issue.

Back in 2022, when Mary McAleese was appointed as chairperson of the steering committee on integration, it was likened in these pages to the threat of the bogeyman – if you can’t sort it out with someone who helped bring peace to Northern Ireland, you mustn’t actually want integration.

A year later, a press release proudly proclaimed that, across the three organisations, there was more than 90 percent support for the amalgamation. And yet, with the stated deadline of 2027 approaching and the glacial pace having slowed to a halt, we have to ask how powerful is that opposing minority? There is more nuance to it than that, of course. Last year, Golf Ireland chief executive Mark Kennelly was interviewed here and spoke of how well that aligning of the old Golfing Union of Ireland and Irish Ladies’ Golfing Union had gone – but even that was a process that lasted around six years from start to finish, with fewer speed-bumps.

Among the major causes for the hold-up on the GAA front is money and how resources will be allocated when everything is under the one umbrella. Speaking in the wake of Mrs McAleese’s resignation, GAA President Jarlath Burns said that, if equality was practised in terms of inter-county expenses, the current figure of around €45m for men’s teams would double.

It is not a surprise that such a tactic was deployed to distract from the GAA’s lack of appetite for integration

Sarah O’Donovan is a regular media commentator on hurling as well as camogie, which she played for both Cork and Dublin.

Speaking to Irish Country Living, she felt that the mention of such high figures was being used as a discouraging tactic.

“Just under a year ago – 22 September 2025 – the Camogie Association published a joint statement on their website which set out the core principles of integration, which had been agreed by the steering committee of the day,” she says.

“These included an integration timeline, a single organisation, a unified membership, structures, rules and governance. Coming up to the anniversary of this statement, the GAA have chosen to scaremonger its membership with inaccurate costings for the provision of funding for female inter-county teams.

“It is not a surprise that such a tactic was deployed to distract from the GAA’s lack of appetite for integration. Fortunately though, the idea of integration has become so embedded that stepping back from it will not be an option for those many volunteers within the three organisations that took the GAA at their word in 2022.”

It was clear, even before the recent events, that the integration train had slowed down. Earlier this year, a roadshow took place to provide members with information ahead of the holding of special congress by each body in the autumn: when so many bemoan the lack of inter-county activity from July onwards, you would have thought the topic would become front and centre but instead it disappeared and now the timeline is up in the air.

Whenever a high-ranking Gaelic games administrator talks about the topic, they tend to say a variation of, “Integration will happen, we just need to make sure it’s done right.”

Liam O’Neill would have liked for integration to have happened a decade ago; it obviously now won’t happen on the watch of Jarlath Burns, whose term ends early next year; and his successor Derek Kent is on record as previously saying that 2034, the GAA’s 150th anniversary, was a likelier target.

Before the push for electric cars took hold, there was debate around the future revolving around the use of biofuels; however, a Green Party acquaintance of mine once said that the problem with that was that “it’s always 20 years away”.

Is integration doomed to a similar fate?