Mr. Kieran Grace:

On the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission's investigation, it is independent as an enforcement body and there is no information, neither should there be any information given to the Department on that. The commission is carrying out an independent investigation to which the Department is not and should not be privy. The Oireachtas, in the Competition and Consumer Protection Act 2014, very clearly laid down the independence of the CCPC in its investigations and the Department has no hand or part in it. Therefore, we would have no information on that and nor should we.

Second, the CCPC was one of the bodies we asked for any inputs it may have wanted in the public consultation process at its outset. Third, I refer to Deputy Rock's earlier comment that it is a market not operating according to the normal market regime. We agree entirely on that because normally, when one comes to detriment for a consumer in a business-consumer nexus - committee members may disagree - one has a seller and a willing buyer. Normally, the detriment is of the consumer being browbeaten or there is an asymmetry in power between the seller and the buyer. In this case people are buying willingly even if it is a high price compared with the ticket price but the detriment is often affecting the people who cannot get tickets anyway. It is a strange morphing of the market. I am not commenting on whether paying over the price is good, bad or indifferent but it is a funny situation from a business to consumer market-type relationship that we are dealing with here. It brings along its own idiosyncrasies.