Mr. Owen Keegan:

I am glad we cleared up any misunderstanding. I fully accept that I indicated I would support the five. From my perspective and given the economic value of this to the city, if I had either refused to take a phone call or stated that we were totally opposed to this, essentially indicating that a licence would not be forthcoming, I would have been accused of undermining a major event coming to the city. I would always work in a positive way to try to encourage people but I would have made it clear to Mr. McKenna there were two key considerations. The first was to ensure no issues emerged from the One Direction concerts and the second was to deal with the legitimate concerns of residents. Through the licensing period there was a failure to deal with legitimate concerns, and if the committee does not agree with my view in that regard, I have given the view of the director general, who has publicly stated it was "too big an ask". There is clear recognition from the GAA that there were legitimate concerns and that having eight concerts at the venue was "too big an ask". It is interesting that Mr. Mulvey recommended a maximum of three concerts. This is not just down to the city council, as it had gone way beyond Mr. Mulvey's recommendation when it permitted three concerts on top of the three which had already taken place. I would not have liked to rule out the possibility of this and if the legitimate concerns of the residents had been taken into account, it would have been possible to have given a licence.

As I mentioned to the committee at the last session, I was very familiar with the application of the event licensing process with respect to the Marlay Park concerts. From my understanding, in the 14 years there have been concerts there, the total number of objections received is one. There are many issues associated with concerts, no matter what the location, with respect to local residents, but with proper management and engagement, it is possible to address those concerns. There was a singular failure to do that with this case and that became evident during the licensing process.