I am delighted that the Minister has attended to take my Adjournment matter, which requests him to work with his Northern counterparts, the GAA and the northern federation for sport to develop a sport for peace concept. I will give a prelude. A football for peace project is ongoing in Israel and Palestine. On the back of this, County Donegal and the rest of Ulster have run a football for peace programme, marketed on the same soccer concept. It will be funded by the International Fund for Ireland for three years. Catholic, Protestant, male, female, Northern and Southern children join mixed teams and play one another. It is not a matter of a Catholic Northerner beating a Protestant Southerner.
Last week, I became the vice president of the Council of Europe's Sub-Committee on Youth and Sport. One of my first works is to have the Turkish and Greek Cypriots join us for a weekend at some point. When I contacted the Palestinian and Israeli ambassadors, they expressed interest in moving the soccer for peace concept forward.
At a GAA function on Saturday night, someone told me that soccer for peace is not what should be considered in the Irish context. I decided that I would put it to the Minister as a possible project. This year sees 125 years of the GAA. Given the history involved, namely, who was allowed to play and who would not have played anyway, I want to drive the idea of children who would normally play rugby playing with children who would normally play Gaelic football, be they female or male. I want a project in which those who play hurling will play with those who naturally play hockey. While the peace process has moved on at a political level with the Assembly in Stormont, it is difficult to get people to embrace one another because of the segregated nature of sport in the North. This affects other aspects of life too, such as where one lives, what school one attends, where one shops, etc.
The 125th anniversary of the GAA is as good a time as any to explore sport for peace. This will probably be more challenging than soccer for peace because that is almost a worldwide phenomenon in which everybody has the same rules and the same understanding of those rules. A project involving different sports might involve each having to learn the other's rules to play rugby one day and Gaelic football the next, or hockey one day and hurling the next, or having mixed rules. It might sound far-fetched but more progress is achieved when people work together in sport and the arts. This will be particularly true if we target the children most affected by the troubles. I recently completed a report on how one teaches history in areas of recent conflict and one of the points found in research in the North is that some children are badly affected by conflict while others are not affected. We should target those closest to the daily trauma and the peace walls and get them to know and put a face on the "other". As David Irvine once said in my presence, it does not matter whether one is Catholic or Protestant when one is at the 19th hole of the Malone golf club. I am concerned that attempts to date have been political and do not catch the next generation and show them that there are no horns or tails on the other side. Soccer for all continues, but the greater challenge is to get the GAA to meet rugby or hockey players and take down barriers. While I understand the financial constraints, I float the idea because the 125th anniversary of the GAA might be the time to encourage an embrace rather than segregation in sport.
