Dublin City Council grant licences for three Garth Brooks shows

“There is a major tourism issue if the gigs don’t go ahead,” Hot Press editor Niall Stokes reflects. "People have booked tickets from all over the world, including the USA, Canada, the UK and of course Northern Ireland – where there is a huge fan base for country music. And a lot of them have paid for flights and booked hotels. Clearly it is not in the national interest to create difficulties for people who have made commitments to travel, so it is really important to achieve some form of accommodation."

Dublin City Council's in-depth statement reads:
“Today 3rd July 2014 Dublin City Council (DCC) as the licensing authority granted permission for three of the five proposed Garth Brooks Concerts in Croke Park. In making its decision DCC acknowledged that both Croke Park Stadium and Aiken Promotions (Ireland) promote and operate well organised and safe events and that these events make a significant contribution to the economy of Dublin.

The City Council considered all the information submitted by the applicants together with the information outlined at a series of event related meetings convened as part of the statutory process associated with the consideration of this licence application. The submissions/observations from members of the public and businesses were also considered carefully as part of this decision process. A total of 373 submissions were received from members of the public on this licence application.

In assessing the application and having regard to the submissions/observations received, Dublin City Council considered that it would not be appropriate to grant five consecutive nights of concerts as applied for, for the reasons set out below.

Reasons:

The scale, magnitude and number of the concerts with an expected attendance of in excess of 80,000 people per night over five consecutive nights, three of them being week nights is unprecedented for Croke Park Stadium.
Three consecutive concerts have already taken place in Croke Park from the 23rd to 25th of May 2014. Given that Croke Park is situated in a heavily populated residential area, five shows in a row following on from the three concerts already held there this year is considered an over intensification of use of the stadium for the holding of special events/concerts. It would be in effect permitting an increase of 100% in terms of the maximum number of concerts that had previously been held in Croke Park in any given year since the redevelopment of the stadium.
The cumulative effect on residents and on some businesses in the Croke Park and surrounding neighbourhoods, of licencing five shows in a row, three of them on weekdays, would lead to an unacceptable level of disruption to their lives/livelihoods over an unprecedented and prolonged period caused by, concert related noise, access restrictions, traffic disruption, illegal parking and potential antisocial behaviour. The City Council would also be concerned with the precedent that would be created if five consecutive concerts in a row of this scale were licenced.
Having regard to the submissions/observations received and given the number of mitigation measures proposed by the applicant it is considered reasonable and appropriate that three of the events should take place and these have been licensed for the nights of Friday 25th July 2014, Saturday 26th July 2014 and Sunday the 27th of July 2014 subject to conditions. As in all cases licence applications for outdoor events under the Planning and Development Act 2000(as amended) are considered on their individual merits.”

Hot Press understands that there is a possibility that the two sold-out dates could be moved across town to the Aviva Stadium - which would considerably increase production costs.

Earlier this morning, Cllr. Ray McAdam had taken to Twitter to report the news that Dublin City Council had granted permission to just three of the five concerts this morning.

"City Manager confirms to me that only three #GarthBrooks concerts will be permitted. More info to follow…”

McAdam is a Fine Gael councillor in the North Inner City.

An agreement had been struck in 2009 that no more than three concerts a year would take place in Croke Park. One Direction have already played two shows there in 2014. The decision not to allow all five of the gigs to go ahead will be highly controversial. Demand for tickets for Garth Brooks vastly exceeded expectation, with a huge number of people booking tickets from outside Ireland – which will bring much needed tourism revenue into a struggling economy.

At this stage, shifting the final two dates to the Aviva would seem like the best way of achieving that – though the promoters may also be considering their legal options. Either way, the negative international publicity if the shows were forced to cancel would be a huge blow to Ireland’s global image and prestige.