Mr. Kieran Grace:

We have not adopted a simplistic view of the matter and accept that there is a problem. The Minister concerned has said in the Dáil that she will finalise proposals to deal with the issue.

Sometimes the public coverage of the issue glosses over the associated complexities. Let us say a large proportion of tickets for a certain concert have been allocated before the tickets have been released for public sale, and even if 80,000 people have applied to buy 80,000 tickets to see Pink Floyd or whoever play in Croke Park, it is almost guaranteed that 80,000 will not be put up for sale at 9 a.m. on that day. Even if one had an exact match of 80,000 tickets for the 80,000 people looking to buy tickets on that day, and even if there were only 60,000 or 70,000 tickets, there would still be disaffected people because they cannot get them. Banning or putting price caps on resale will not solve the problem because high-demand events will always prove problematic.

Ed Sheeran got around the issue by ensuring he offered many concerts that were located around the country. In fact, his concerts may have sold out but everybody who wanted a ticket for one of his concerts managed to get one, unless they lived somewhere that had no Internet, telephones or anything. That is one way to get around the problem but it a very expensive way to do so for the artist. Ed Sheeran is a very popular artist because between 300,000 and 400,000 people want to attend his concerts but not every artist commands the same respect. We know that certain groups have enough fans to sell enough tickets for one concert but not enough demand to sell a second concert. Let us not forget that people want to save face. They will want to sell enough tickets for one concert but they will not want to undersell the next one.

I do not want to overstate the case about pre-allocation but I ask members to bear that in mind. I appreciate what the Chairman said about the high demand for tickets to an All-Ireland GAA final. Tickets for any All-Ireland are like gold dust and people normally sell them at face value because they want someone else to enjoy the annual event.