The full scale of debt arising from the redevelopment of Páirc Uí Chaoimh remains unclear, although one delegate at today’s convention speculated it may be as substantial as €30m.

Kennedy, in her speech to convention, said the board can no longer depend on gate revenues to fund Cork GAA activities, even if the board are hopeful the reform of the county championship will lead to greater bodies coming through the turnstiles in 2020.

She also revealed that the scale of Cork’s financial challenges, coupled with the demands of a new job as principal of Carrignafoy Community College, led her to recently contemplate resigning her role as chairperson.

Part of the solution to tackling the county’s finances will be the likely appointment of a commercial manager, stemming from a recommendation from Cork's financial planning and advisory sub-committee.

“As successful as the year was on many fronts, our annual report also shows the scale of the challenges we face. Reform comes at a price, as does success, and a combination of factors outlined by the county board secretary and treasurer resulted in a serious deficit, which combined with the financial issues associated with the stadium, leaves us in a very unwelcome situation,” said Kennedy.

The last couple of weeks have been incredibly difficult for me as I struggled to juggle the demands of a new job with the realisation of the scale of our financial challenges, and there is no doubt that during the past week I descended into self-pity, wondering if it would be better for my own mental and physical health if I just walked away from it all. However, that is not what I want to do. I want to take on the many opportunities we have to continue our improvements. I want to stand before you this time next year with Cork GAA in a much better place.

“Some of this year’s costs were once-offs, but there will always be once-offs. We must face up to the fact that we can no longer depend on gate revenue to fund our activities, even taking into account the championship reform we hope will lead to improved takings next year. It is possible that as a county, the significant resources we had at our disposal before the redevelopment of the stadium led to complacency in some ways.”

She added: “The stadium project also continues to be an extremely frustrating one for all of us, and we must accept that it will take longer than originally envisaged before it becomes profitable. The failure of the pitch earlier this year was a low point for us all, and obviously had a significant impact on the stadium’s capacity to generate revenue, along with being a general setback to the whole project.

“However, progress is being made, albeit slowly. We now have a pitch in place on which we can rely, and which opens up many new possibilities to us. We have some fantastic people involved; we are working on new management structures for the stadium; we have relaunched the premium tickets, which are an absolutely vital funding stream; we have at least two big concerts here next year; rugby offers us a possible extra revenue stream, and above all, we must not lose sight of the wonderful asset we have here in the stadium.

“Our executive has already proposed dedicating a number of meetings to our finances, and I now propose to involve our clubs in our financial plan through the dedication of part of a number of County Board meetings early in 2020 to consideration of our finances, and I would appeal to you to discuss this issue at your club meetings and to treat it with the urgency you did our championship reforms earlier this year so that your delegates can bring fully-informed views to the table.

"I am confident that, working together, we can deal with our problems in a transparent, effective and successful manner.”

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