Concert refund - Victory for the consumer

Concert promoter MCD was last night facing a bill as high as €671,000 to compensate fans after Barbra Streisand’s July concert turned into a rain-sodden farce at Castletown House in Co Kildare.

The concert was marred by poor seating arrangements, badly behaved fans and parking chaos, brought on largely by poor singing and bad weather. As a result, many people missed much, if not most of, the show.

Inundated with an unprecedented 1,144 complaints, Ann Fitzgerald, acting chief executive of the National Consumer Agency, took up the case for all ticket holders, emphasising that they were entitled to both the seat that they had purchased and the quiet enjoyment of the concert.