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The Annual Report is the Ard Stiúrthóir's main opportunity to give a public review of the Association's activities and to discuss prevailing issues.

In this year's report, Páraic Duffy reflects on a number of areas, including:

- The Structure of Congress and the possibility of change
- Composition and succession arrangements for Central Committees
- The state of Gaelic football
- Discipline within games
- The Disciplinary structures of the GAA
- The need to abolish the Interprovincial Championships
- Relationships between players and county committees
- Distribution of finance within the GAA

Meanwhile, in a powerful conclusion to his annual report, the Ard Stiúrthóir addresses some central issues not directly addressed earlier in the report. He cautions that while 2015 was a year of major debate in the areas of senior championship structures, fixtures scheduling and player overtraining and burnout, the possibility of the status quo remaining in place after Congress 2016 remains considerable.

On this, he writes: "In this context, Congress 2016 is an important gathering as there are critical decisions to be taken on all these issues.

"Where the structure of the football championship is concerned, once we decided – after long debate – to retain the provincial system, options were limited. And it is unlikely that hurling structures will change. If we do decide to change structures at Congress, the task will be to explain and market the new structures and to do our best to have them fulfil their potential. 

"But if we decide not to change the structures, then let us accept the current structures as the best that are available to us, accept what has been agreed, and accept, too, that it is time to stop talking about structures and to deal with what is and not with what ought to be or might have been. Our time and energies will be needed to face the many other issues we need to address."

Elsewhere in the conclusion, he addresses a fear, expressed recently by Tyrone Secretary Dominic McCaughey, that pressures on club volunteers and a culture change within the GAA towards a 'training and coaching industry', has led to "officer burnout" and a shortage of GAA volunteers throughout the country.

"It seems to me that the choices we have made and the practices we have allowed to develop have led us to a point in the Association’s development where we need to ask ourselves a fundamental question about our essential values, about what is the Association’s most important work," Páraic Duffy writes, addressing the importance of placing the club at the centre of the GAA's value system.

In a stark finish to his report, he warns of the consequences of not doing this.

"...in the anxious times we live in, where the global and international seem to equate mostly with menace and distress, we can draw solace from the local, the small, the community, the club.

"This is where our Association began, where it lives and from where it draws its strength. There is great vibrancy and enthusiasm in our clubs, the fruit of tremendous and heartening dedication by members committed to the ideals of the GAA.

"These are the people we need to support through our decisions at Congress. Guided by their spirit, we will not go far wrong. Neglect them, and we lose touch with the heart and soul of the GAA."