Roscommon Board refute claims that Dublin fans were charged for their complimentary buses

By Stephen Barry

Roscommon GAA have sought to clarify that any fans charged for a bus service to the refixed League game against Dublin were not on the County Board's designated complimentary buses.

The match was switched at 9am on Sunday morning to Páirc Seán Mac Diarmada in Carrick-on-Shannon, 44 kilometres away from the original venue of Dr Hyde Park, which was waterlogged.

Roscommon Board PRO, Hugh Lynn, insisted that the complimentary buses were provided as advertised and were paid for by the GAA.

“I can totally confirm that people who travelled on our bus service were not charged. However, people were charged on other buses,” Lynn told BreakingNews.ie.

Dublin fans charged €10 for the 'complimentary' bus laid on by @RoscommonGAA

— Stephen Doyle (@dubsoulrebel) April 3, 2016

“We hired and paid a company to provide transport from Roscommon to Carrick-on-Shannon from three designated locations, Hannon’s Hotel, Molloy’s Bakery and The Square in Roscommon, and we did that.

“Our transport provider is adamant that no passenger that they carried on the complimentary service from Roscommon to Carrick-on-Shannon was charged.

“We continued our investigation and we discovered that there were numerous other buses that departed from other locations that were not any of the designated services.

“Nobody was charged on our buses and the only one that was paying was the GAA.”

Lynn cited a Sportsfile photo of Dublin fans disembarking from two buses that did not belong to the official provider of the complimentary service.

He added that the buses served the demand that was there at the time and were not full up.

“I told RTÉ at 11.30am that we’d take as many as we can and if we need more buses, we’d get more buses. That was the situation, so what happened, I don’t know.”