Gerard Lawlor, chief executive of the Northern Ireland Football League, says he hopes the Irish Premiership will be fully professional in five years.

"As CEO, I would like to see the men's Premiership become an all full-time league within a number of years," Lawlor told BBC Sport.

"We need to start planning for the clubs who aren't full-time.

"We need to be able to support them and we need to be able to give the clubs the tools, frameworks and mechanisms to try and achieve that."

Lawlor added the growth and promise of the Irish Premiership was "night and day from where it was eight or 10 years ago" and all teams need to come on the next step of the journey.

"We all have to go on a journey. We can't allow three of four clubs to go and run away and have a four-team league," he added.

"We need 12 teams, and we need 12 below it in a very strong Championship to push it forward.

"We talk about having four full-time clubs, but all the other clubs are clearly getting close to the models of extra training and extra development.

"Saying 'we want you to be full-time in five years' is frightening for some clubs. When you go along to clubs to say to them, 'here's the headline strategy. We have plans in place to try and grow it along with you, to try and grow your clubs with you to help that develop in the right direction'.

"Do I believe it is achievable? I believe it is a fully achievable objective."

Lawlor added that he intends to speak with clubs in a "mini-summit" in the New Year when professionalism, summer football and playing on Sundays will be discussed among clubs.

"There is growth everywhere in the league. We plan to hold a mini summit with all the clubs, and we discussed it last week with the committee to say, in January we want to sit down and we want to tackle issues like summer football and Sunday football.

"These are discussions that, as a group of clubs, we must sit down and try to face the challenges together going forward.

"There is growth everywhere in the league and people are really starting to believe in the Irish League.

"We, as an organisation at NIFL, have strategies and we have plans for the future."