Kevin Moran (Longford-Westmeath, Independent) | Oireachtas source

This is the biggest event that took place in Europe. We are talking about the Phoenix Park but we must take the other areas visited by the Pope into consideration. Let us take Knock, which I visited, and the Phoenix Park. A total of 4,000 people worked to make this site available for the Pope's visit. Can we learn from how the ticketing was organised? Yes, we can but the OPW was given a task to put forward with regard to the Pope's visit and we did that. We acknowledge that there is significant cost involved but if something happened and we did not do what we were told to do, the conversation we are having here today would be different. We got that event up and running with no major injuries or anything like that.

There are costs involved.

Deputy Quinlivan referred to the gates. From visiting the Phoenix Park, we all know the number of gates that are there. The specialised work involved in them alone is enormous but we are guided by planning rules and conditions setting out that we must do it and we have taken them on board.