Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am, obviously, going to commend my colleague but we can all relate to this Bill. We have all had to try to buy tickets at some stage for ourselves or - more commonly now - for our children. It is a nightmare to find how quickly the tickets are snapped up and are then suddenly for sale at an exorbitant price. It can often be twice the price. Before the committee started, we were speaking informally about how well this committee has worked and we were complimenting the Chair, and rightly so. One of the reasons this committee works well is because, to some extent, we have put our party political hats to one side and we try to find common ground. The common ground is here in respect of this Bill. All of us know the current situation is not acceptable. It was never acceptable where I grew up in a working class community in London. The first rule was never to talk to a tout. We never had anything to do with them. I think it is the same in many parts of Dublin as well.

We do have to tackle this issue. We are often criticised for not dealing with issues relevant to people. This is relevant to an awful lot of people and my colleague, Deputy Quinlivan, deserves great credit for this initiative. There should be enough common ground among all of us. Deputy Quinlivan has already indicated that if the Bill needs to be improved, he is open to those improvements. Let us work constructively and make sure that this Bill makes progress.