Mr. Tim Gaston:

The National Transport Authority has increasingly taken a role in co-ordinating all of the agencies involved in running events such as the Ed Sheeran concert in the Phoenix Park, to which I believe the Deputy is referring, and also events at Croke Park and the Point. We bring together all of the main providers, including, in the case of the Ed Sheeran concert, the OPW, because it is in the Phoenix Park, Dublin City Council because it has some involvement in the street space, and Dublin Bus, Irish Rail, Transport Infrastructure Ireland and TransDev on the Luas side to create a plan to handle both the arrival and departure of people from the Phoenix Park. There is a lot of co-ordinating going on for those large events. The big event this year is of course the papal visit, which has involved intensive planning. A dedicated team is working solely and very closely on that event with An Garda Síochána, events organisers, the OPW, the Department of the Taoiseach, and a large group of other stakeholders. A very well developed transport plan is being put together for that event.

The challenges we face are the smaller events, for example the concerts in Malahide Castle. These cause particular problems during the week. If public events occur at the weekend we are able to corral public transport to provide access to and from them. The bigger challenges are small midweek events, given that public transport simply does not have the capacity to dial up an extra 100 buses to deliver people to another venue mid-week. For those reasons we believe the event organisers and the businesses that are going to take the profit from those events should also be providing a transport plan. They should work with the local authorities on that.