The Merriman Summer School in Lisdoonvarna, Co Clare, decamps today to the site of Michael Cusack's cottage at Carron, in the northwest of the county. Cusack, the founder of the Gaelic Athletic Association, is the subject of this year's school.
Plans are afoot to restore the cottage but a shortfall of almost €300,000 is endangering the project.
It was hoped that all building work would be completed by November 28th - the centenary of Cusack's death. But the company in charge of the project is finding it increasingly difficult to raise the money.
"The funds are rising all the time," said project leader Martin O'Loghlen, "but it is proving hard to get there. We are working very hard to achieve our aims, but this is a €1 million project and we are a voluntary organisation."
The project was initiated by the Michael Cusack Development Company - a voluntary group - formed in November 2003 to restore the cottage, which had fallen into disrepair. The overall project includes the restoration of Cusack's cottage and the development of a space where the Cusack story - from his birth in 1847 until his death in 1906 - will be told.
It will also contain research, archive and lecture facilities. A GAA coaching academy will also be based at the site.
Entitled the Michael Cusack International Academy of Gaelic Games, the aim is to develop the skills of young people, using local GAA facilities, B&Bs and hostel accommodation. "Our ambition is to introduce top-class coaching and allow young people to learn from the stars of hurling, Gaelic football and camogie," Mr O'Loghlen said.
Last night at the school proper, Kevin Whelan, director of the Keough-Naughton Notre Dame Centre in Dublin, gave a lecture on the radical aspects of the GAA's foundation. The formation of the association displayed a new form of Irish cultural expression, not traditional as it has so often been described, he said.
"It belonged to modernising rather than archaic forces within Irish society and was dependent on the cultural carnage of the Famine for its emergence," Dr Whelan said.
He told the summer school that an excessive concentration on literary figures such as Yeats and Joyce had been at the expense of the importance of sport in modern Irish culture. "Most sports history is notoriously written by fans with word processors." Dr Whelan said he was attempting to "write sport back into cultural history" through a close study of hurling.
Irish Times journalist and historian Brendan Ó Cathaoir spoke earlier yesterday on "The Ranch War Around Carron 1904-26", a series of events which started towards the end of Cusack's life in 1906.
The school continues all week.
