GAA refuses demands from residents near Croke Park for 1,600 free tickets

THE GAA has refused to give in to a demand to supply Croke Park area residents with 1,600 free tickets for each of three concerts to be held in the stadium this summer along with the six rugby and soccer internationals due to be staged in 2007.

Accordingly, the Bon Jovi concert next Saturday night will finish at 10pm, an hour earlier than hoped. And the same will apply to two other concerts, Robbie Williams and Billy Joel, on June 9 and July 29 respectively.

Last year, the residents had no issues with the later finishing time to the U2 concerts.

Stadium director Peter McKenna said the later finish time last year meant traffic flow was less affected before the show and it facilitated the lights show — whereas it will still be bright at 10pm.

He said the cost of providing 1,600 tickets for each event would be over €1 million and they were not prepared to be “put over a barrel” by a few individuals purportedly representing the residents’ groupings.

Mr McKenna said an appeal against a city council go-ahead for an 11pm finish had been lodged with An Bord Pleanála and this process would take up to 18 weeks.

“We agreed a deal ... last Thursday that the concerts would be extended to 11pm and that the residents would withdraw their appeal. But on Friday, they said that unless the deal was extended to include 1,600 tickets for all events, including soccer and rugby, which in essence would be over a million [euro], they couldn’t agree.”

He said the GAA would “fulfil their obligations” to distribute 250 tickets to the community tomorrow.