Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Bill is welcome. There has been a lot of talk about it for a long time, but it has been a long time coming. I understand that in 1998, the year Galway beat Kildare - there were probably ticket touts around then - Young Fine Gael proposed it. There have been many calls for and promises and proposals on this Bill. To paraphrase "Bleak House", the young person who was promised a new rocking horse has grown up, possessed himself or herself of a real horse and trotted away into the next world in the time it has taken the Oireachtas to address his or her concerns. The Bill is now being rammed through all Stages in one hour. That I have to be serious about, as it is no way to mark Seanad 100. This is the Government spitting in the face of the Seanad yet again and I object to it, as I am sure many others do.

In the brief time available to me, I will come to the Bill itself. It is welcome. There was a time when ticket touts were at least people who bought and resold tickets on the street. They may have invested a few quid and were selling tickets on. It was still gouging people. A friend of mine, a fellow called John Smith, used to enjoy at concerts going up to people who were thinking of selling their spare tickets and frustrating the touters and gougers by telling them he was a genuine supporter and would give them face value for a ticket. On a few occasions he succeeded, in the presence of outraged ticket touts, in getting people to follow their conscience and sell a ticket at face value to a genuine fan. It is the case these days that we are not dealing with people on the street but very often websites which are being operated using bots and algorithms. There may be criminal elements involved in the running of all of this. A Bill is urgently needed to stop this practice.

I welcome the fact that we will not have the likes of Ticketmaster being able to gouge further, as it did through its Seatwave resale platform where people returned tickets to sell them for further profits, which was disgraceful. As I conclude my portion of this time, I wish to state that there should be something in the Bill to prevent people buying too many tickets at once. That is going to contribute to the problem in one way or another.