Tyrone chairperson Roisin Jordan says gender quotas are not currently practical for the GAA.

Minister for Sport Patrick O'Donovan yesterday announced that sports bodies will have State funding cut unless at least 30% of their board members are female. Bodies have until 2019 to meet the conditions but Jordan - who became the first female County Board chairperson in 2014 - is concerned that females who graduate into key positions due to the controversial stipulation might not have sufficient experience:

"I can't see it being feasible now. I think the time-frame is just not attainable," she told The Irish Independent.

"How can you vote people into positions when they haven't got the experience? Our association is a voluntary association. If people don't present themselves to be elected you can't just pick them out and throw them in just to bring it up to the 30pc.

"I know there's a lot of help available, I can speak to anyone for advice, but I just don't know how they're expecting us to put people in positions like that. It's not a tick-box exercise within the GAA, we have to get the right people in place.

"Every day is different. There's days when you have no problems and everything goes smooth and others when there are difficulties - experience helps you to deal with it.

"It would be extremely difficult without that because no matter how much I knew as vice-chair in Tyrone, I couldn't have gone into the chair without experience. There's different things that come up that you're not expecting, and for people to be put into positions that they've no experience in would be very difficult for them."

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