*Programme sales brought in over €40,000 for Clare GAA this year.
CLARE GAA’S public relations officer does not have access to accounts perpetrating to be the ‘official’ pages of the Association on Instagram and Facebook.
Lissycasey’s Anne Hayes completed her first term as PRO of Clare GAA and outlined at County Convention that she does not have access to its social media channels.
John O’Sullivan of Ruan is the IT officer for Clare GAA, operating the official website and Twitter page but access to Facebook and Instagram has not been extended to the PRO, she lamented.
“We would have liked to be in control of Clare GAA Instagram and the numerous Clare GAA Facebook pages however we are unable to get access or to find out who is involved in these,” Hayes stated.
A Facebook page ‘GAA Clare’ had been created by her predecessor Michael O’Connor who is now Vice Chairman and this account continues to be updated.
Former Vice Chairman, PJ McGuane asked Wednesday’s Convention who has access to the social media pages and why it wasn’t “under the control of the relevant person”.
Head of Operations with Clare GAA, Deirdre Murphy said Hayes’ comments were discussed by the Executive.
“While we would love to have access to all the media, we do not,” the PRO outlined. “We have access to the Twitter but we don’t have access to the Clare GAA Instagram page, we did have access to it before and now we can’t get it back”. She detailed that there are three Facebook pages, two called Clare GAA and one named GAA Clare, “we haven’t access to the three of them, we know who has access to one but as of yet we haven’t been given access to it. We spoke about setting up a new one but we said then there would be four. I believe the man who has Instagram account is in the room so he might return it to us”.
In her report to Convention, Anne who was elected in April, said a PR committee was formed in May and comprised of herself, O’Sullivan, Sean O’Halloran, Michael O’Regan, Flann O’Reilly, Sean Chambers and Seamus O’Reilly. “The committee met regularly with the major workload between July and October when the hurling and football championships were in full swing. A PRO WhatsApp group was set up in May and has worked very well for promotion and information”.
From the period of July 23rd to October 31st, 25,000 programmes were produced bringing in €42,750 in sales.
Club secretaries and PROs were thanked by Hayes for their assistance in sending on information for programmes with the committee responsible for proof reading, the “professionalism” of the staff at RealPrint were also acknowledged. “Clubs should realise that programmes are a matter of record and therefore should ensure that team lineouts should be provided correctly”.
