MCD to pay out €671,000 over Streisand debacle

CONCERT promoter MCD was last night facing a bill as high as €671,000 to compensate fans after July’s Barbra Streisand spectacular turned into a rain-sodden farce.

A two-month internal inquiry concluded yesterday that poor seating arrangements, badly behaved fans, the artist’s management and MCD were to blame for the chaos at Co Kildare’s Castletown House.

Concert-goers paid as much as €551.75 to see the US singer perform her hits but were unable to find their seats while car parking was thrown in chaos by poor signing and bad weather.

Yesterday, Dún Laoghaire firm MCD apologised for the third time on record and promised to refund 2,500 of the 17,000 fans who attended the concert after receiving an unprecedented 1,144 complaints.

The pledge could cost MCD as much as €671,000 after the firm promised to refund 438 fans in full while 1,229 fans who found themselves in “cheaper seats” than they paid for will receive a cheque for the difference.

Finally, MCD has agreed to give €100 vouchers for future concerts to a further 839 fans who had their views blocked, had car parking problems or suffered other difficulties.

Chaired by former Garda Commissioner Pat Byrne, the internal MCD inquiry said the event — hampered by bad weather — perhaps should have been cancelled.

Problems were worsened when — with a day to go — Ms Streisand’s managers insisted on the removal of sections of seating because the singer did not want to see empty banks of seats.

“[These seats] should not have been removed, irrespective of what the artist wished,” said the inquiry.

The short notice of the seating change and the bad rain meant staff were unable to re-number the remaining seats in time.

As a result the numbering of seats was out of sequence, causing confusion among arriving fans who thought their places never existed — even though they had been reallocated.

Chaos reigned as early-bird fans were unable to find their seats and decided to sit elsewhere, creating further problems as fans arriving later then found their seats occupied.

The inquiry said MCD bore the most responsibility for what happened at the Celbridge venue on the night, and should have planned fully for the bad weather.