GAA president Jarlath Burns has defended the association’s Allianz sponsorship stance, saying that to cut ties with the insurance giant could have left it potentially "toxic" to other sponsors.

Friday’s meeting of the GAA's An Coiste Bainistíochta heard a report from the Ethics and Integrity Commission (EIC), where it was ultimately decided to maintain the sponsorship deal in place with Allianz.

Speaking on RTÉ Radio 1's Saturday Sport, Mr Burns stressed that the company which the GAA has ties with - Allianz Ireland – doesn’t have any links the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

"My number one priority is I'm accountable to the membership of the GAA and mitigating risk, and we just felt based on the findings of the Ethics and Integrity Commission, that the best course of action was to maintain our link with Allianz,” the Armagh man stated.

"I think one of the things that we need to understand is that, let's say if the decision had gone the other way, what landscape would we be facing with today?," he added.

"First thing we need to realise is that Allianz covers our public liability, employers' liability, personal accident, property asset insurance and event insurance.

"As well as that, they're the official claims administrator for the GAA injury benefit fund. So the first thing we would have to do is look for a new insurer.

"And if you think of all of that corporate knowledge and embedded cultural history that they have with the GAA, we would be looking for a new insurer for all of our clubs.

"So, for example, Allianz know every club that has mobile posts, where all they are, the catch-nets, those wobbly catch-nets. We would be starting with a blank page. We'd be asking all our clubs to do re-asset inventories.

"As a secretary of a club (Silverbridge) myself, I had to do this three or four years ago for Allianz. That's a very torturous process.

"Second thing we would have to do is to look for a new insurer, and in this modern world of quantum entanglement, it would be impossible to find a company that wouldn't have some sort of a sibling relationship going right back to that conflict.

"The third thing we would have to do is we would have to legally unravel the existing contract, which runs to 2030, which would make us a toxic prospect for any other sponsorship company."

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