It is intended to seek Members' approval of a New Constitution at a future Special General Meeting (SGM) to be held later in 2010.

The new constitution is required to comply with the GAA's encouragement of all its clubs, including Cuala, to develop their Constitutions to a consistent standard. Although Cuala has no specific motivation for changing the Constitution, we welcome the opportunity for tidying-up and modernising the current rules. Members will recall that Cuala's immediate concerns - defining the size of Coiste - were addressed by the passing of specific amendments at a SGM in Nov 2008 . It is our intention to preserve these changes in any new rules.

The vast majority of the changes are simply to achieve consistency with the GAA's 'exemplar' Costitution in the Official Guide. We do not believe any of these changes represent a significant departure from our current Constitution.

The final document needs to be approved by both the current membership - through a Special General Meeting and the County Board. The document is currently with the County Board.

In the interestes of transparency, we are now publishing the Draft Constitution and we invite Members to clarify and make comment. Whilst it is open to any Paid-up Member to propose amendments at the SGM itself - we strongly advise against this because -
1. given the limited meeting duration, a last minute amendment may not be fully thought-through for its impact on or consistency with existing rules. And attendees might not have sufficient time to discuss and debate the issues arising.
2. the document to be put to the meeting will have already been approved by the County Board and any changes will mean we will have to revert to the Board for further approval - a potentially endless cycle.

For these reasons we have been engaging in an exercise to explain the changes and seek consensus in advance of any SGM. The Draft Constitution has already been circulated and discussed widely at Coiste, it has being sent for comment to the Games Committees and Michael Goodwin has facilitated a series of Information Evenings in the Club during October 2009.

You are strongly encouraged to review the proposed document which is, of necessity, somewhat cumbersome. However we have adopted the following conventions to make reviewing it a little easier-

- passages that are the same in the GAA & existing Cuala versions are in plain black type like this (i.e. most of the document)
- rules that Cuala wish to adopt uniquely are in Red/Bold/Underline (not too many of these)
- rules that are consistent with the Exemplar Constitution but are NEW to Cuala are in Black/Bold/Underline - but there are no surprises here.

Happy Reading

Current Constitution

Propsed Constitution - Draft

GAA Official Guide

Questions and Comments to Cuala Registrar