By John Harrington

Shortly after being elected the Uachtarán Tofa of the GAA at Annual Congress on Friday night, Jarlath Burns sat down with the assembled media to share his vision of what he hopes to achieve in his three years as GAA President.

Q: Jarlath, how does it feel to be elected the GAA’s Uachtarán Tofa?

Jarlath Burns: It’s an incredible honour, as you can see from my club downstairs who virtually all showed up tonight. I feel it really tonight for my club and my family because when you belong to a club you really belong to a community, and the GAA is wonderful at doing that.

The Silverbridge club has raised me right from when I was infant, they gave me my first football, they gave me my first value and taught me the importance of giving and not receiving. I have spent all of my life in those fields, and it has just been a great honour since I’ve finished playing for Armagh to be able to go back to my club and be chairman and be secretary of my club.

When you are a member of a club you are just an ordinary person, you are an ordinary citizen. People asked me three years ago why I was so relaxed about losing. I was relaxed about losing because I lost to a really good candidate and an overseas candidate, and I thought from a GAA perspective that was good. But when I came out and I saw the number of people who had come out to support me, it was really humbling, because I said ‘God, these people actually really do respect me,’ because in your club it’s the one place where it’s home, and you don’t really necessarily want to be respected because you just want to be one of the other people.

And to see them all there tonight, we’ve never won a championship, we’ve always lived in the shadow of Crossmaglen and ironically it was a Crossmaglen man who really mentored me through a lot of my career, Gene Duffy, who told me to go for Central Council. But tonight Silverbridge, everybody knows now where Silverbridge is and if that’s the only thing that I’ve achieved tonight, it’s a good start.

Q: You’re wearing your late father’s tie. I’m sure you’re sad he can’t be here. What would he be saying if he was?

JB: Dad lived until he was 91, and he had a wonderful life and he died with all of us around him and he was very happy to pass away. I have no regrets about the fact that he isn’t here because I know he’s in a better place, and I think of many people - for example my best friend Declan McVerry who died after the two of us came back from watching Arsenal at the Emirates. I left him and whenever he came back he died, and that was a very, very sad day four years ago.

He had so much of his life left to give. But my father was a very honest and brutal man, and I remember him saying ‘ach sure don’t worry about that, haven’t you a great job down the road there, why would you be leaving that to go to Dublin with all that hassle?’ He was a very practical man.

He was a great mentor to me as well. He took me to football matches and he was always quietly supportive of me and I miss him so much. This (the tie) was all that I got of all that he owned and it means so much to me and I've worn it all around the country.

That and Mickey Traynor's pioneer pin.

Q: Who was Mickey Trayor?

JB: Mickey Traynor was one of...you know we all know this fella in the club...Mickey Traynor was treasurer when we hardly had a club for about 40 years. And then he became one of the veterans of the club. He was a man who I would always go to wisdom for in the club because he's just one of these people who never had a formal education but just knew so much about everything.

He was in his 90th year as well and had a very happy life but I was just honoured to be able to carry a bit of him. His whole family are here today and one of his son's is my brother in law and one of my best friends as well.

Q: The large vote you received from the delegates surely gives you a strong mandate for your time in office?

A: It does. I didn't have a team the last time. I was afraid to have a team because I was afraid to ask people to sit on my team in case they'd say no, I'm voting for somebody else. But this time a lot of people came forward throughout the country and said I want to be on your team and they were working very hard for me, many of them at risk to themselves because they were from provinces where there were candidates standing and I knew that was going to be difficult for them but they just said that we want what's best for the Association.

We had it down at 139 (votes). People say divide by two and take away seven and there was feverish movement all last week and even today and phone-calls and you have to go back and ring this person and there was a lot of pressure coming on from various sources. But to get 158 which is significantly more than 139 is an incredible mandate. That mandate only lasts tonight. It doesn't matter whether you win by one or whatever it is, it's an enormous responsibility and I said that. And the more I think of it the more I feel it weighs on me.

It is a great honour. I've a very clear vision of where I want this Association to be in three years time when I leave it. If I don't get there, because it's so clear, I know I will feel like I have failed. So many people have said to me along the way it's difficult when you're President of the GAA to achieve the change that you want and you have to begin by inspiring people to believe in your vision. And then you have to gain consensus, and then you move on to get that change but it has to be incremental.

Q: What kind of change are you talking about?

JB: The very first job I had in CLG, Sean McCague gave me, implementing the first amateur status report. Peter Quinn brought it out in 1997, the only change was that players could keep their endorsements. The game has moved on so much. Every county I went into they are telling me they are overwhelmed by the amount of money that they are having to spend.

That is giving us a tremendous dividend because if you look at the high performance culture that exists within our, particularly Division 1 and 2 teams. You don't want to be seen as a Luddite to be pulling that back but you have to remember we do have an amateur status. And if you look at the amateur status that exists in American universities, they are very robust in protecting that. And I don't think we are protecting it strongly enough with regard to the number of times we are asking our players to train, their cardiovascular load and the number of backroom teams, the size of panels.

I really want to work with the GPA, as the representatives of the players, to try and find a proper balance that means that counties can run a county team but they can also then build infrastructure that they need to. Every county I went into, they either have to do a serious job on their stadium or build a centre of excellence and a lot of them are finding it overwhelming.

Whenever you read the chairman's booklet and there is one to be a county chairman, nowhere does it say that you have to engage in a multi-million infrastructure project rebuilding a stadium. I want to be pro-active in that. I want to give serious assistance to all those counties because those counties that I went into, they just felt overwhelmed by having to take on that.

Q: One stadium that may come on your watch is obviously Casement Park. The GAA has pledged £15M and has said they won't go any further so there's a gap to be bridged in terms of funding. You might be in a good position to bridge that gap with northern insititutions. Would you agree?

JB: I would. And I agree with that. I think £15m is enough. If we spend more on that, that means we have to take it away from elsewhere.

You spend the week of Congress meeting the overseas units. We’re not properly investing in those as well. And we don’t even understand what the GAA looks like overseas. I think we maybe need to have a Strategic Plan to deal with that.

Casement is a very exciting project. Belfast, like Cork, is Ireland’s second city. I think Pairc Ui Chaoimh is a fantastic stadium in Cork and I commend Cork on going ahead and having the courage to build it. I would say we need to have the courage too to go ahead and build it.

Casement Park, where it is at the moment is not the fault of Ulster GAA. It’s the fault of circumstances that were beyond our control and northern politics of the minute. If you listen to any of the statements I have made, they are very conciliatory towards the Unionist population because they are a British culture who exist on our part of Ireland – and we are promoting Irish culture. If we want support to build that stadium, we have to get support from the Unionists. And they have to be given support in the context that the GAA is an inclusive organisation. Because inclusion is one of our values. We have to do as we say we are going to do.

Q: So £15million would be the limit the GAA will provide in funding? The gap would have to come from State money?

JB: Yes. If you go back, Casement began as the Maze project which was a stadium for all. We stayed in that project right until the very end. And that is why we were told the 65 million, plus the 13 million, so 78 million – that that would build a proper regional stadium for Ulster GAA. It’s not our fault that all of that has come to a standstill. We need to hold the government to account that we get the stadium that we deserve for our patrons.

Q: Before the last election you called for the GAA to take an advocacy position on a border poll. Is that something you would want to promote during your presidency?

JB: I have taken a back seat in all of those debates because I felt that if I am going to be representing the GAA – as I said in there we have to do it very responsibly and in a way that takes consideration of the inclusive nature of the association.

In the climate where there would be a border poll called, it would be incumbent on all civic organisations to take a position on it and it wouldn’t be shock therapy to anybody to hear that the GAA, who have always ignored partition very honourably, would want to see a united Ireland.

That is my dream and it is not a subversive dream to have. It is a very valid perspective, particularly in the context of Brexit but we would have to do it very responsibly. If you look even at the last independence referendum in Scotland, both Celtic and Rangers, two big sporting organisations in that country took a position on independence.

I don’t think it would be unreasonable of us to say that we would want to see our land united because even practically it doesn’t work, partition.

Q: Would you like to see the integration of the the GAA, the Ladies Gaelic Football Association and the Camogie Association happen on your watch?

JB: I’m going to be clear on this – I do not want a legacy. Three years’ in an organisation like the GAA…forget about a legacy. We operate through our strategic plan and it lasts until 2026 and part of that is integration.

People down there (from Silverbridge) come from a club that doesn’t even understand what a non-integrated club looks like. Our ladies have been very much a part of our club since they were founded. So it won’t be shock therapy for me to work with that.

Having said that (about legacy) one thing that I did find going around our country is that there is a serious lack of places to play our games. 140 years from the inception of our Association, if that’s the biggest crisis that we have, isn’t that a wonderful place where we are.

If we are going to divide our assets in three which is what we would be doing with integration and rightfully so I think it would need to come with a massive injection of facilities for us. Because remember these organisations are administering a huge chunk of Irish culture – our games which are unique to us.

We in Ireland have a huge responsibility to put the proper infrastructure in so that they are fit for purpose. People might say: ‘No, spend that money on the health service’ but if you spend it on the GAA you are spending it on positive, healthy, wellbeing things. You get people walking and playing…I know from being principal of a school that one of the things that helps people’s mental health is belonging to something, feeling that they belong.

The GAA tagline is: ‘Where we all belong’ and in terms of mental health, which is such an issue around the country, if we can continue to invest properly in the GAA and in fields, well maybe we’ll not have invest as much in wards.