Call for concert licensing law to be amended following Croke Park problems

A call has been made for legislation on licensing concerts to be amended to ensure a licence be obtained before tickets go on sale where events involve more than 10,000 tickets.

Fine Gael Senator Catherine Noone said, "We do not want to discourage artists like Garth Brooks from coming to Ireland but it takes a rare case to highlight the inadequacies in a system."

Speaking about the controversy surrounding the sale of 400,000 tickets for the singer’s concerts, Ms Noone said selling tickets before a licence is obtained “has always been the way it occurs”.

But she said in the Seanad it was “difficult to believe it has been allowed continue like that for so long” given that the regulation has been in place for 13 years.

Fine Gael's Martin Conway called on the Government to intervene "to try to prevail on Mr Brooks to perform the three concerts".

“There might be a role for the Irish Ambassador to the US to make an approach,” he said.

He called on the Seanad leader Maurice Cummins to "determine the approaches the Government could make to Garth Brooks and his management".

High places

Mr Cummins said however that the proposal to have an appeal system to the Minister “is politicising him again”.

“It actually is looking for somebody to go to friends in high places to deal with the issue, with which I certainly would not agree.”

Fianna Fáil’s Averil Power called for the Minister for Tourism to attend the Seanad to discuss the concerts.

Fianna Fáil's Jim Walsh, referring to the decision to allow three concerts, said it was "odd but reflective of our undemocratic system of local government that one highly paid official makes these decisions" while elected councillors were sidelined.

The Seanad leader said planning was a reserved function of the manager rather than the council.

Independent Rónán Mullen said nobody had censured those who made the arrangements “in apparent disregard for the requirements of the law”.