Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

In the morning, the four pairs of shoes that were under the van were safe but Eugene's were gone. He lost his Asics and had to come home in his bare feet. It was a harsh lesson. He should have done what he was told in the first instance. There is a debate still going on as to who actually threw the runners out. If I told Deputies, I would have to kill them so I will not tell.

Sorry, to get back to the policeman. When he took the tickets from me I pleaded with him. I told him that we had just come over from Ireland for the match and asked him to give them back to me. He said no because it was illegal. In the end, I had to cry to get the tickets back. I cried my eyes out but at least he gave them back to me. It worked and he gave them back and I was actually glad that it was possible to buy tickets, even if they were £10 too much. If it had been impossible to buy tickets there, I would not have been to the game. If it was totally impossible to sell the tickets for more than £20, I would not have gotten in to the match.

On the issue of inflation, I was at the World Cup in Mexico in 1986. I went to 16 matches out there and I bought tickets outside the grounds for most of them. We were staying in a hotel in the middle of Mexico City for $1 per night. It was actually a nice place. The prices were pretty low at the time and the tickets for the games were priced at around £4. We got tickets outside every ground right up to the quarter final. The stadiums were pretty full. The Azteca is the one in Mexico City and it holds 114,580, all sitting down. It is the finest stadium on the planet; it is amazing. There is an English language newspaper printed in Mexico and it was advertising tickets for the quarter finals, the semi-final and final. The advertisement said "reasonable" prices so we decided to check it out because we thought it might be harder to get tickets outside the grounds. We were getting cold feet, even though we had been successful up until then. We decided to go along and see what it was like. We went to the address on the advertisement, which was a hotel with about 30 floors. It was the finest hotel in Mexico City. When we went in we saw lots of big FIFA banners and realised that it was actually the FIFA hotel. The touts were American. We asked where the tickets were for sale and were told it was in room 372. We got into the lift and went up to room 372 and could not believe the tickets that were in there. Now, FIFA is rotten to the core but hat is hardly news to anyone here. The tickets were literally being sold by members of FIFA to these touts at a profit and they were obviously making money on them too. The stacks-----

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