President Liam O'Neill has had his say on former runner Jerry Kiernan's controversial claim that the GAA shouldn't benefit from the Government's coffers.

Former marathon runner Kiernan ruffled GAA members' feathers when criticising the Government's financial support of the redevelopment of Ruislip - but O'Neill didn't rise to the bait.

"What I would say about it is that we're aware and respect the achievements of athletes in every sport," he said to the Irish Independent.

"We were delighted to congratulate the IRFU on their international success, we applaud our soccer teams, our boxers, we parade our sportsmen who win international competitions in Croke Park, and we're happy to do that.

"It would be an awful pity that any sports person would look to denigrate any other sportspeople and we applaud athletes.

"In fact, it's ironic that at a time when we have made an offer to Athletics Ireland to use some of our centres of excellence around the country, we've said that if they want to put athletics tracks around some of our centres of excellence, that we'd be delighted to co-operate with that, because we were the Gaelic Athletic Association at one time.

"There's always been a sort of natural alignment between Gaelic games and athletics and we'd love to foster that." Tweet

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