I want to raise the ugly side of the GAA. On 24 May, Sunday week, the biggest game of the All-Ireland football championships this year will be on in Killarney when Kerry play Donegal. The GAA has again put championship football behind a bloody paywall. Ordinary rural people with issues in Kerry and Donegal, and indeed the whole country, are being excluded from viewing this spectacular game of football. The very people who built the GAA are being excluded from watching it, including elderly people living alone at home, people in hospitals, people with disabilities and people in rural Ireland who do not have smart TVs, smartphones, laptops or any other instrument to stream the game.

The men and women who gave decades of their lives to the GAA, the volunteers who cut the grass, washed the jerseys, sold the tickets, made the tea and sandwiches and stood at gates in the lashing rain so that our games could survive and be played still pay their TV licence. They have supported the GAA all their lives and now when Kerry and Donegal are lighting up the championship they are told they have to subscribe, stream, download apps and pay extra money just to watch their own county teams. This is a total disgrace. Gaelic football is beautiful again. Look at the crowds. Last Sunday over 32,690 people were in Fitzgerald Stadium in Killarney to watch Kerry play Cork. Nearly 25,000 went to Dr. Hyde Park to watch a historic win for Roscommon.

Hear, hear.

We see Westmeath contesting the provincial final against Dublin next weekend. We saw Cork the last day as well. The second best sideline ball ever taken by a footballer was taken by Monaghan's Jack McCarron, all viewed on RTÉ, which took Monaghan to a provincial final. We see the delight in the crowds and the number of people attending these games again. Unfortunately, what does the GAA do? It hides the Kerry and Donegal game away from the very people who made the association. All the provincial finals are on TV with two football finals to go. However, apparently that is not enough. Now it is box office. Now it is about squeezing more money out of loyal supporters and excluding people from watching their own club players. The GAA was built in rural parishes and rural communities, not in the corporate boardrooms up the street. There are 12 days until this game. Today I am calling for the Minister of sport to come to the House. It is not too late for the debate. This needs to be challenged because the people who carried the GAA for generations should never be locked out from watching their own heroes on the biggest stages of all.