HEALTH INITIATIVE
Colin Regan is at the forefront of the GAA’s fightback against the Covid-19 pandemic...
‘THERE WILL BE A NEED FOR PEOPLE TO BE LIFTED UP AGAIN’
COLIN REGAN cuts to the heart of the matter: ‘As our games stopped, our people started.’ The former Leitrim footballer is the GAA’s Health and Community Manager. He heads up a team of five who have been pulling a lot of strands together in terms of the association’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
‘It might sound like a cliché to talk about the GAA as this community-based organisation but that is the truth of it and what we’re seeing,’ he says. ‘We had a groundswell of activity from the grassroots up, and then from our official structures as well. That placed the GAA in a good position.
‘We’re probably unique in a sporting context in that we have a national health and wellbeing committee, we have county health and wellbeing committees and provincial health and wellbeing committees. Nearly every club now has a healthy club officer.
‘Then we’d have 300 clubs involved in the healthy club project and they would all have received official training around health promotion and partnership development. Initially everyone was trying to find out what was the best thing that can be done.’
When the GAA were first developing the healthy club model that has come into its own in recent weeks, there was a familiar face at the table for its first meeting – Dr Tony Holohan, the chief medical officer of the Department of Health. Dr Holohan has been a regular feature on the main evening news with his own version of a state of the nation address, the latest Covid-19 updates delivered with his trademark calm.
‘He’s unflappable. Tony is doing an incredible job. And he knows the potential of the GAA to support the public health message and to echo the important messages they have been getting out. He coaches in his own club.
‘Like I said, he was at the very first meeting with us when we were looking to develop that healthy club model, he knows those clubs have received training in the area of health promotion and have a tried and tested pedigree in delivering.’
Indeed, it has all come to the fore in such inspiring effect as Irish society quickly grapples with the changed times of school closures, businesses shut down, and social distancing.
Meath club Dunderry featured in a segment on RTÉ’s Six One News after arranging for its members to help with a food delivery service from a local shop for the vulnerable or elderly. After an order is placed over the phone, a club member then collects and drops any messages to the front of the recipient’s house, maintaining social distancing to reduce the chance of the spread of infection.
In conjunction with SuperValu, the Kildallan club in Cavan also set up a delivery service, which has since been formalised. A press release on Friday confirmed that SuperValu and Centra were now officially linking up with the GAA to extend the same service on a national basis.
The announcement from the St Jude’s club in Dublin was echoed by so many around the country:
‘Can we collect your shopping or a prescription?
Do you need a lift to a hospital or doctor’s appointment?
Do you want to visit the local church?’
As an array of inter-county players led the skills challenges being posted online, so many clubs got in on the act. Kiladangan in Tipperary for example posted a 14-day hurling and camogie skills challenge for 5-11 year-olds where each day in the calendar was framed with a different one, from freestyle pucks to one strike, one touch. Plus a 60-second freestyle skills competition, with the prize of a signed Tipperary jersey for the winner. It wasn’t a coincidence that Tipperary coach and selector Darragh Egan was listed amongst the contact numbers.
Allenwood in Kildare were offering help with printing or filling out the emergency jobseekers benefit form online for any members in the unfortunate position of having lost their job. And on and on. ‘The flexibility and speed that a club can respond at community level is invaluable,’ explains Regan. ‘Not just to an organisation like the GAA but to a structure like the HSE which has mechanisms it must follow before things can be actioned. So for GAA clubs to step on to what was a vacuum in the initial days and weeks was really valuable.
‘A lot of clubs were doing things already. Take the Scotstown club in Monaghan, one of our healthy clubs. They have an initiative every year where they identify someone living on their own in the community and make sure they get regular visits. Before this was ever going on.
‘The GAA’s social initiative has been running since 2009 which is designed to engage older members of the community. The Ballinderreen club in Galway, as part of their healthy club project, linked in with their old folks home to provide regular meals in the clubhouse for the older members in their community. Covid-19 brought a whole new dynamic to that and the restrictions as to what is appropriate in this time of social distancing.
‘We were able to get the public health message out quickly to volunteers and to people who were taking up the charge in their local community in a vast variety of ways. Identifying gaps in services or linking in with statutory or voluntary services to get staff mobilised at very high speed.’
Regan (left) also explains how the GAA is working with other organisations to help in any way they can.
‘I was on the phone this morning with the CEO of Volunteer Ireland so we’re going to be working very closely with them in the 26 counties.
‘And Volunteer Now in the six counties to better identify if there are gaps in services where the likes of Alone or Age Friendly Ireland or some other organisations have a dearth in volunteers. Because often volunteers are older members who might now have fallen into the vulnerable category.
‘Volunteers are falling foul to Covid-19 as well so there is a need to replenish volunteers in other organisations as well as the GAA so we’re going to signpost interested GAA members on to those two platforms – Volunteer Ireland and Volunteer Now – so they can make themselves available for wherever the highest need is. And those two organisations are very well placed to assess where the need is highest in the community.
‘Because if you’re vulnerable, you’re vulnerable no matter where you are living. He’s asked if the current pandemic will change the GAA in any way, or cause it to be viewed differently.
‘Maybe once what has been considered peripheral work of the GAA will be considered core work. That it will have elevated the work the GAA does as a community organisation, not just as a sporting organisation.’
Like everyone, a part of him imagines what it will be like when the country comes out the other side. When some sort of normality returns, and the games resume.
‘It shouldn’t be underestimated how important that will be when we get the green light from the public health authorities that people can gather and celebrate again. Because I think there’s going to be a great need for that.
‘A great need for collective mourning on the losses that have taken place but then a need, rightfully so, for people to be lifted up again.
‘To come together and socialise like the way Irish people love to do. Gaelic games is one of the ways people love to do that. We’re all preparing for that day.’