The GAA president John Horan was on RTÉ Radio 1’s Today With Claire Byrne and is confident we’ll have a Championship this summer, he said the following
“I’d be hopeful come 5 April that if we get the inter-county back we’ll also get the juvenile back, and that schools will be in full operation by that time,”
“We’re confident we can get a full games programme [for the year] into that time frame.
“Last year we got through a full club programme, we completed the leagues and we got the inter-county championships played. I’d be confident we will get a games programme in place and we will actually get all the activities completed.”
“Obviously the first level that will come back for us will be inter-county. It’s then about how long will it be before the actual club gets back into full flow. There is flexibility… there is movement within the actual arrangement.
“But people can be confident and be positive that the GAA will be back and we will get through all our programme.
“I think everyone realised last year how important the club activity was for us. We made the decision to bring the clubs back first before the inter-county. That gave the clubs the opportunity during the good weather in the summer to be out on the pitches. If you were to push the club campaign too late in the year you’d possibly have difficulty with pitches and floodlighting and that. Club is key to it all.
“That’s one positive message I want to get out there to everybody: the GAA will function and it will function fully if we can get going with our inter-county games on 5 May.”
“Britain are somewhat ahead of us in terms of the virus and the vaccine because of the benefits they’ve had from their vaccination rollout, but I think towards the later end of the year in our bigger stadia we will see some crowds returning.
“They won’t be packing Croke Park with 82,000 but we have done it already in terms of working out numbers n terms of social distancing – one metre and two metres – and how many spectators we can get into Croke Park.
“We’d be capable of doing that for our other big stadia. What will probably happen is the bigger games would be played in the bigger stadia so we can facilitate bringing back spectators.”