Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

An uncontested judicial review seems to be an absurdity. It is like an uncontested Leinster final. If a matter is to be decided and one party does not turn up, he or she will appeal if he or she loses. We might cross that one off the list. The One Direction concerts went well by all accounts but I note that the events were not discussed until nine days afterwards. While I accept that a bank holiday Monday intervened, from my experience of events when I lived in Trinity College, the discussion has to be held far earlier than nine days after the event because otherwise people will have forgotten about it. As Senator Brennan and others have noted, the informality of the procedures cannot be allowed to continue. If one says, "thank you very much, it is in an interesting document", that might be perceived as encouragement but if one says, "I do not like the document", that is prejudicial. There is a huge risk for the officials in this regard. I agree with other Deputies and Senators that the law was upheld and the integrity of the planning process was maintained. Eleven fraudulent submissions out of 384 equates to 3%. Can figures be provided for other cases with which officials have dealt? Reference was made to a survey of 27,000 people. Was that ever submitted to the city council? I have asked whether we could see the results of the survey.

On the issue of tickets being sold subject to licence, it was an absurd idea to allow transactions to take place in late January for a concert that was being held six months later. Somebody should have told the promoters that they cannot take people's money six months before an event which had not yet been sanctioned. That might be something that needs to be tightened up. Consultation should have been made mandatory in advance of the application. The tickets were sold in late January, there was some telephone communication in early February, the formal application was made in April and it was turned down in July. It is an inordinate length of time for people to put their money in somebody else's bank account for an event that had not been sanctioned. They bought tickets for a futures market and the gamble failed. Is there a risk that the city council could be sued by people who will say they participated in this exercise for six months and everybody ended up losing money? Mr. Keegan indicated that similar problems do not seem to arise in respect of Marlay Park and the Aviva Stadium because there are better relationships between promoters and residents in these areas.