By Conor McMorrow
The CEO of the IRFU Philip Browne has told a Dáil committee that his organisation is opposed to government plans to impose for gender quotas on sports organisations and labelled the move as "anti-democratic" and "tokenism".
Browne said, "The suggestion by the government that it is considering the imposition of gender quotas on sports organisations is a concern for the simple reason that female rugby is still in its infancy and it will be difficult to find suitably qualified female candidates with the accumulated rugby wisdom and skills set to fill such quotas with retreating to tokenism.
"Apart from being anti-democratic and a potential breach of the laws of the Union such an activity would be the very antithesis of good governance.
"The inference behind the suggestion of quotas is that in some way the existing governance model of Irish Rugby is holding back the women's game.
"I would suggest that the evidence is quite to the contrary and that since the IRFU took on responsibility for the women's game in 2007, we have seen three-fold growth in the women's game, with the national side winning two Six Nations championship, becoming the first Irish rugby team to beat New Zealand and also the emergence of a successful and promising Irish women's 7s team."
Later in the hearings, FAI CEO John Delaney concurred with Browne.
"Along with Philip I do not see the requirement for gender quotas. If you are developing the game correctly with the affiliate and they are happy with how we are developing participation and giving representation, rather than doing tokenism, you are better off to do real stuff and make it happen."
Representatives of the IRFU, along with the FAI and GAA appeared before the Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism on Wednesday. Earlier Delaney outlined that female participation in the sport is key to the FAI's strategic plan.
He said: "The FAI has two women on our National Council, as well as women represented on our finance, legal & corporate, international and underage committees.
"The chairperson of our audit committee, as well as our heads of legal and HR departments, and our Business Partnerships Director are women, and we have female representation at UEFA committee level."
"Our Women’s teams played 43 international matches last year. The role of women in Irish football is growing all of the time, and increasing the numbers of female participation in the game is key to our Strategic Plan 2016-2020 and the Women’s Strategic Plan 2015- 2018 (both of which we have submitted to the Joint Committee).
"The more women and girls who are involved in football, the stronger our game becomes."
The GAA's Páraic Duffy highlighted "a role for everyone in our games".
He said: "The GAA is an inclusive family-based entity that offers and promotes a role fore everyone within our games and administrative structure and is fully committed to the core principal of inclusivity.
"An increased number of females have emerged in GAA officer positions in recent years at club and country level, reflecting the expanded role of women in our clubs."
"We are supportive of efforts to encourage greater female participation at all levels of administration within the GAA."
"We have a lot of females in responsible positions such as county chairperson, couny secretarues, treasurers and PROs. On our management board we haven't because everybody there bar two people are elected and therefore we have not had women standing for those posts as yet. It will happen through time but as this debate goes on we are open to engage on that.
"I think it would be better if it was not done through enforcement and if you can get agreement on it and I think that is possible. I'm all the organisations would be quite happy to work with the government without being too draconian."
He did add, however, have a certain percentage of women in positions within a certain time frame would be difficult to achieve but "the GAA is open to engaging in that debate."
