FOURTEEN MONTHS after being presented to the GAA’s management committee, the discussion document on payments to managers prepared by the association’s director general Páraic Duffy is to be released this week.

The convening of a meeting of top county officials for next weekend was agreed at last Friday’s meeting of the management committee. According to a Croke Park source “that is likely to go ahead and it wouldn’t make sense to invite people to a meeting without first circulating the document”.

It is also believed the paper will be released to the public once officials have been informed.

One county official contacted yesterday said whereas no invitation to the meeting had yet been received, it was expected.

Sources in Croke Park also clarified that a gathering of county officers in Croke Park last Saturday was not a general forum at which the issue of payments to managers might have been raised but a review meeting for counties with full-time administrators.

Movement on the discussion document has been long awaited since Duffy raised the issue at the 2010 annual congress in Newcastle, saying the GAA could no longer maintain a rule book that said one thing while the association membership did another. But after the paper was drafted and presented in November of that year, the matter had been kept mysteriously under wraps since.

The issue was revisited at last April’s congress by association president Christy Cooney, who strongly upheld amateurism as a “core value” and proposed finally to initiate the discussion: “With this in mind I propose to call together the chairpersons, secretaries, treasurers and Central Council delegates to a discussion forum within the next two months to gather their views on this topic.”

That timetable ran into trouble as the summer began but Cooney explained to media during the international rules tour of Australia at the end of last year he would be addressing the subject in the final months of his presidency, which concludes at next April’s congress.

“Over the next period you will see some discussion on it,” he said, adding that it would be important to ensure that any new regulations on the subject would be enforceable.

“We’ve got to see if we put something in place if it will be deliverable. There is not much point putting something in place if it can’t be delivered and won’t be delivered.” At last that process is about to begin.