The GAA has expressed its mystification about the claim by the Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy, that the association doesn't pay income tax.

During the Finance Bill debate that rejected proposals to grant tax allowances to elite amateur sportspeople, McCreevy said: "The GAA has also been exempt from income tax for the past 75 years, since 1928. That special relief should not be overlooked by those seeking even more favourable regimes."

According to GAA spokesman Danny Lynch, the association's tax status is no different from any other sporting body.

"All sporting organisations including the GAA, the FAI and the IRFU are exempt from paying VAT on gate receipts. But at a time when no one was putting a penny of public money into sports facilities, the GAA poured an estimated three billion into infrastructure, and a good share of that went back to the Government as VAT payments. We also pay VAT on equipment such as hurling helmets."

But the levying of VAT only began in the early 1970s, and Lynch said that he wasn't sure from where the reference to income tax in the Minister's speech had come.

"Anybody who's employed in Croke Park on a full-time basis pays PAYE on their earnings.

"At first we thought it might refer to profits from the Cusack Club facilities in the new stand or something like that.

"But the GAA's a non-profit organisation."

Sunday's National Football League Division One B fixture between Sligo and Armagh at Crossmaglen will start at 3 p.m., while the National Hurling League Division Two B match between Kerry and Meath has been switched to Killarney.