O'Neill and Duffy today met with Government officials, including former Mayo manager and Committee Chairman John O'Mahoney TD and ex Olympian Senator Eamon Coughlan, to discuss the GAA's new media rights deal, with a particular focus on handing rights to a non 'free-to-air' broadcaster for the first time, in the shape of Sky Sports.

O'Neill says the new deal has greatly widened the reach of the GAA worldwide through a number of broadcast platforms.

"Things have moved on and this is what we want people to understand about this entire media rights package," ONeill said.

"We have more options now. We have explored more options. We know now that we can partner with a station if they will do anything for us.

"We know now that we can partner with a subscription channel. We know now that we can go digital as the RTE deal will do.

"We know that we have the tried and trusted methods that were there, but that was limited.

"This means now that the family who want to watch our games don't have to go to a pub at 9am in New York."

O'Neill cited examples of people trying to watch Gaelic games abroad previously, and the situations they found themselves in.

"A member of the Shannon Gaels club in New York told me about how there are eight children in her family, and now they will be able to bring their friends and neighbours in, in the morning and have a shared experience in their own home.

"That's a huge improvement. That's not commercial alone, that strikes at the very core of all that matters being Irish abroad and it brings people home.

"We now have a situation where people will watch the same game in real time around the world and will be able to communicate with home and say 'wasn't that a fantastic goal' etc."

Duffy says that nothing has been taken away internationally from deals which were in place previously.

Duffy said: "Premium Sports have broadcast our games in the past and the new arrangement with RTE (Digital) will make those games available also on all kinds of devices right across the USA to the highest quality.

"Premium Sports will still have the rights to broadcast to pubs and clubs. There will still be a market out there for that. That is still in place and we haven't changed that.

"The GAA will benefit from this and they benefit from it as well in charging the pubs and clubs. That has been the way for the past 20 years.

"Premium Sports involvement is still there. We have simply added to it, we have taken nothing away. We have added to what was there in the past."

At home Duffy says that the GAA approached these broadcast negotiations with great care.

"Our games continue to be widely available on TV and radio to a domestic Irish audience. We need to protect the important part of our revenue from broadcast rights in funding the work of clubs at home and abroad," he said.

"In revenue terms the new value is a marginal improvement. Finance was not the key priority for us with just five more Championship games broadcast: 45 versus 40.

"RTE will broadcast the same number of games as previously. RTE asked to broadcast 31 live games. Irish people in Britain will be able to view 14 games live for the first time.

"Sky will simulcast with RTE the All-Ireland semis and finals, while Irish people in Australia will for the first time be able to watch games live.

"There has never been so much live TV of GAA as there is now. The charge against the GAA of disenfranchising of our members is untenable. It has never been the case that all championship games have been broadcast live on domestic TV.

"We have always had to find a balance between live TV and supporters attending our matches. Supporters have long been going to matches.

"We had three objectives approaching these negotiations. We saw immediately that it would not be able to satisfy both domestic and international.

"Due to emigration its no longer tenable for the GAA to see the audience as just Irish people living in Ireland. We need to take those abroad into consideration.

"A considerably small reduction in games broadcast free here was the balance we had to strike. We will monitor the impact and beyond 2017 it is the intention to keep the same number of games free-to-air."