A new ad campaign by a potato crisp company featuring scantily clad GAA players has been lashed – by the President of Ireland’s camogie association.

Joan O’Flynn has hit out at the latest advertising shots used by the Hunky Dorys firm to promote their brand of chips.

Models wearing county colors are adorning billboards up and down the country in the latest campaign.

As Ireland’s top camogie players, female hurlers, await their own national final this weekend, O’Flynn has claimed that the players can beat the socks off scantily clad models.

She told the Irish Independent: “This is a gratuitous representation of women dressed as GAA players and is particularly ill-timed given that camogie’s top teams will be starring in Croke Park this Sunday.

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“This is the week when our very best players, top-class female athletes who demonstrate the very best skills of their gender in sport and are ideal role models for young girls, will be lining out in our All-Ireland finals.

“To see such gratuitous and exploitative images of women being linked with sport, and also taking up valuable space in the media in the week of our All-Ireland finals, is particularly distasteful and disappointing.”

Wexford play Galway in the All-Ireland senior final on Sunday as Hunky Dorys take more flak from sporting organizations.

Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland (ASAI) ruled last year that similar ads for Hunky Dorys but with a rugby theme had caused grave and widespread offence and should remain permanently withdrawn from all media, including the advertiser’s website.The ads featured women in revealing tops playing rugby under straplines such as ‘Are you staring at my crisps?’ and ‘Tackle these’. Those ads provoked a record 300 complaints.

ASAI chief executive Frank Goodman said his organization had already received 30 complaints in relation to the new GAA campaign.

Hunky Dorys boss Ray Coyle refuted the criticism however. He said: “We have to attract attention one way or other. We do not have pockets as deep as Unilever, which is currently running the racy Lynx advertising campaign.

“Last year’s campaign was a huge success, despite the complaints, and resulted in 300,000 hits on our website.”