Ollie Crowe (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We will not mention Kildare. On a serious note, it has been frustrating and galling to see the resale websites becoming more common and charging extraordinary prices for tickets over the past decade, as the Minister of State alluded to. I will be delighted to see an end to the practice. The numbers of tickets available on those resale sites has increased and is growing consistently. These websites were owned by promotional companies which sold the tickets originally. It was, effectively, legalised touting. Undercover investigations such as the one conducted by "Dispatches" on Channel 4 in the UK showed that large numbers of tickets were going directly onto resale websites without ever being sold. Thankfully, that is no longer the case.

Of course, no legislation will remove criminal acts entirely and we continue to see an issue over tickets being resold online, given how difficult it is to police. This legislation will at least ensure it is being done by individuals rather than by the companies responsible for selling the tickets.

Euro 2020 is happening currently and despite it being illegal, tickets for matches are being sold for thousands of pounds. It was reported that tickets for last week's game between England and Germany sold for up to 20 times their face value in some cases, which is outrageous.Organisations such as UEFA and other sporting bodies and promoters, despite what they may claim, do not particularly care if tickets end up being touted for far higher prices than their face value. We also need to examine whether greater responsibility should be placed on the primary sellers of tickets to take every possible measure to ensure that tickets cannot be resold.

Given the technology we have in this day and age, it does not seem unreasonable to me that each ticket would have a name on it and a person would have to show his or her ID when entering an event. Names could be linked to barcodes. I appreciate this would result in cases where people who can no longer attend an event for whatever reason are left with tickets they cannot use, but it is better than tickets being sold outside of stadiums for hundreds or thousands of euro. Other measures which achieve the same outcome do not result in people who are no longer able to attend an event having to suffer a loss. It would be possible and preferable.

In his closing contribution I would be grateful if the Minister of State could offer his views on this, in particular on whether we need to enhance the responsibility of primary sellers, which I believe we should, to ensure that tickets go to genuine fans insofar as is humanly possible. I acknowledge the work done in the past number of years by the Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, the former Deputy, Noel Rock, and Deputy Maurice Quinlivan. As a member of the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment, I am fairly familiar with the Bill and I recommend it.