Clubs support Castledaly motion on special meetings
Last Wednesday night, delegates at Westmeath GAA’s county convention gave their support to a motion from the Castledaly club proposing changes to the rules governing the criteria for the calling of special general meetings in clubs.
The well-received motion is to be refined by the county board before being forwarded to the annual meeting of Congress, where it will be debated and, if accepted, would result in an amendment to the GAA’s architecture of club governance.
Outlining the substance of the motion in the Mullingar Park Hotel last Wednesday, Castledaly delegate Enda Kelly said that earlier in the year, his club ran into a situation where a special general meeting was sought.
When perusing the GAA’s rulebook, the club executive discovered something which they weren’t sure other clubs were aware of: that the signatures of just 12 members of a club, submitted to the club secretary, are all that is required to force a club executive to call a special general meeting at ten days’ notice.
On foot of this, Castledaly felt compelled to pursue the matter further, proposing that Congress consider the following amended wording for Article 8.8 of the GAA's club constitution: “The Executive Committee shall call a Special General Meeting for a date not more than twenty-one days from the receipt by the Executive Committee of a requisition, in writing, signed by not less than ten percent (10%) of the full Adult Members of the Club, or Twenty Five (25) Adult members, whichever is the Greater, and ten clear days' notice, in writing, shall be given to the Members.”
The rationale behind the amendment to the constitutional wording is to ensure that the requirement for calling a special general meeting is proportionate to the size of a club’s membership. This would provide flexibility by “accommodating both large and small clubs – maintaining a fair standard of representation while preventing the threshold from being unreasonably high for clubs with lower membership numbers”.
Mr Kelly told delegates that a special general meeting is “serious business” and something on the same level as an AGM.
“The club felt strongly enough about this to put down a motion that ensures fairness for clubs,” he added. “It’s not just for Castledaly or Bunbrosna or whoever. It’s for any club constitution.”
Mr Kelly said that the current provision allowing 12 members to force a special general meeting meant that, essentially, just six members and their spouses could hypothetically precipitate such a meeting on any issue, even in a large club where they represented a tiny proportion of the membership.
“We’re proposing that the ‘12 members’ be changed to 25 members or else 10% of your membership,” Mr Kelly explained. “In simple terms, at the moment, if you have a club with 90 members you would need 12 but if you have a club with 1,000 members, you would still only need 12.
“With this motion, if you have 1,000 members in your club, you would need to get 100 members to sign the motion to call a special general meeting. The motion protects all clubs but particularly the bigger clubs with bigger membership.”
Martin Williams (Lough Lene Gaels) queried how a prospective petitioner for a special general meeting would know how many signatures they would have to collect. Frank Mescall, chairman, replied that they would have to request and be told the club membership numbers by the club secretary.
There was no further debate and Mr Mescall said that, “reading the room”, he detected that delegates were largely in favour of the motion. “It will need to be tidied up a little bit but we will take it to Congress,” he added.
The chairman congratulated Mr Kelly and the Castledaly club on tabling such a well-constructed motion, which received a round of applause from delegates.
It was the only valid motion on the clár, the remaining either referred to the planning committee, or ruled out of order.