So Garth Brooks stuck to his ‘5 or none at all’ ultimatum and will not be joining us on the rock as planned later this month despite having friends in far from low places. Over the past week we’ve had:
- A comment from the Taoiseach (yes our Head of State) live from Berlin on National television about the issue hoping it could be resolved;
- The chief executive of the Labour Relations Commission, Kieran Mulvey appointed to mediate the protracted dispute between the GAA and residents around Croke Park;
- Sinn Féin tabled an emergency motion to go before Dublin City Council hoping to save all five Garth Brooks concerts;
- Emergency legislation in the licensing of concerts proposed by Fianna Fáil’s Timmy Dooley;
- The Green Party welcomed the decision by Dublin City Council to reduce the number of Croke Park Garth Brooks concerts from five to three but called for a change in the legislation to prevent such ticket sales in the future;
- Meanwhile there’s a hate campaign for Dublin City Council who refused to licence two of the five concerts not to mention the D373 (373 residents of Dublin 3 who objected to the concerts) who are now being tarnished as almost anti-patriotic in their stance against an invasion of cowboy hatted line dancers;
- Detectives (those limited resources we’re always hearing about) are investigating the possibility that some of the complaints that led to the Garth Brooks concerts being cancelled were forgeries.
- An elaborate blame game media frenzy is now in full swing.
BUT some facts and figures as always to temper the emotions:
Yes the town, country will lose millions – particularly GB himself, Aiken Promotions but also a hell of a lot of small ancillary businesses in largely the hotel and catering sector along with a good few black market operators working the concert scene.
Yet why are we saying we are losing this money when it was never ours to lose? Did we work out the same projections on not hosting the 2014 World Cup? No, because we were never in the running for the 2014 World Cup.
Nor were we ever in the running for the 5-in-a-row.
There was an agreement in 2009 between Croke Park area residents and the GAA about not having more than three events at the stadium in any given year. 5 in a row shortly after the One Direction invasion was always in breach of this agreement. So we can give out about Dublin City Council and the residents and whoever we want but the reality is a multiple of zero is still zero whether that’s 5 or 50.
Low Decimal Places
Of the 27,000 households in the area, only 373 people objected to these concerts, that’s 0.01381. Even if half of those signatures were forged (as we wait with bated breath for the results of the investigation) that would still give us only 0.0069 – we’re talking low decimal places.