Incoming GAA President Liam O'Neill insists he is confident that the Association at every level can meet its financial obligations.

With the country still in the grip of a recession and the broader financial crisis some way from resolution, the GAA faces debt problems at all levels, from club to county and provincial to central.

Among the more high profile cases is that of Thomas Davis, the Tallaght club which is said to be in the region of €2m in the red, but that case is emblematic of problems facing the organisation around the country.

O'Neill - the Laois native who will become President-elect of the Association at Congress next month - concedes that more cost-cutting across the board is inevitable but he is nevertheless upbeat about the outlook for the future.

Quoted in the Irish Times, he said, "The challenges are definitely financial but I think we can meet them as well as take initiatives to cut costs. For instance, we're not making good decisions on bulk purchase. Too many of our units go off in their own direction when, if we pooled our resources, we'd save an awful lot of money.

"I'm not a financial expert, but most people can understand when you reduce it to income and expenditure and at club and county level, you can't spend what you're not taking in.

"We're lucky that the property bubble didn't leave us with a bigger headache than it did. A lot of clubs got caught, but I believe that the capacity to repay loans is still there in the vast majority of cases. Our core business doesn't require a huge amount of finance.

"There is a problem with paying managers but it will only stop when units decide, 'this is costing us too much and if we get a coach from within the club, results won't be much different but our expenditure will be reduced dramatically'. If counties were brave enough to do the same, there'd be big savings." Tweet

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