Eamonn Maloney (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the deputation from Dublin City Council. I am impressed by their frankness given the circumstances we are in. I am a Deputy representing the city and county of Dublin. Clearly it is regrettable for the domestic economy and the wider economy that an event like this is not to take place given the amount of money involved, etc. and the fact that the effects would be so widespread in terms of accommodation and restaurants. We all regret that all of it has collapsed and is now not going to happen.

We have been trawling over all this from the beginning, when it began to unwind, but I was never happy with the recommendations or the pressure to involve politicians in the matter. The more politicians became involved, the more it began to fall apart. I am not saying that this was entirely the reason the concerts were cancelled - it is not - but it took it to a different place and it became rather fractious. Second parties and third parties got their backs up about it and I regret that part of it because it went off in a particular direction.

Whatever we say about politicians, Kieran Mulvey, who did his best and always does, and the mayor getting involved, let us be frank about it: the people who cancelled the concerts were not from Dublin City Council. It is as simple as that. I have gone over it and listened to the various contributions. When I was not at the committee I listened closely to the contributions of the city council deputation and the other parties involved, including Mr. Aiken, the GAA, etc., on the monitor. No doubt someone will contradict me, but the original formula was for three concerts. Then, with the excitement of it and because many people like Nashville music, it began to accelerate. Suddenly three concerts became four concerts and then it became five concerts.

I have a simple view about this. As politicians and legislators we should be careful about this given our chequered and recent history in respect of planning and development matters. We have laws in this country, in particular, the Planning and Development Act 2000, which has been referred to. As legislators we have put it to the local authority, in this case, Dublin City Council, that it is the function of the council to carry out these laws. We cannot have it both ways. We maintain we have a law that has gone through the Parliament and the Dáil and we have said that local authorities must enforce it and cannot tinker with it. We cannot then ask Dublin City Council to bend the 2000 Act or melt it a little because we want to have additional concerts. Should we turn away from a licensing system that is in place for good reason? Some of the relevant good reasons have been cited. I do not believe we can do that.

Forgive me for using that awful phrase, but we are where we are. The concerts are not going to take place. I regret having to say it, but perhaps as part of the fall-out there is an attempt to engage in the blame game and look for a fall guy. In this case, the fall guys are the people to my right. That is unfair. As I noted at the beginning, the council did not pull or cancel the concerts. Extra tickets were sold to make a lot of money. Let us stop beating around it. There was no licence for any of the concerts and there was no certainty about a fourth or fifth concert. Let us suppose an agent goes off and sells 160,000 tickets for a concert that has no licence. Let us suppose a developer decided to build 500 houses in County Dublin but the foundations have not been dug and he does not have planning permission and despite this he takes the deposits from people. Then all of us here, myself included, would be up in arms.

Someone went off selling tickets for concerts, for which no licence had been granted, and the fall-out of that is that everyone has become involved, including, to use Garth Brooks' words, the prime minister. This is an embarrassing situation and there is no point in pretending otherwise, and it is not only embarrassing for Dublin City Council. Let us be honest about this. People should not be trying to pillory Dublin City Council as if the process it operates under should be bent and melted down just because of a wave of interests in two particular concerts. That is my view on it. We should draw back a little bit on this.