Residents' anger over Robbie Williams tickets give-away

Quoted from: http://breakingnews.iol.ie

' 07/06/2006 - 18:01:14 Disgruntled residents from Dublin's Croke Park
region today hit out at the way the free tickets for Robbie William's
concert were handed out to the community.

Disgruntled residents from Dublin's Croke Park region today hit out at
the way the free tickets for Robbie William's concert were handed out to
the community.

Ahead of the pop star's Friday night gig, residents called for a better
system to be put in place after hundreds of people spent hours queueing
in a bid to avail of the tickets set aside for locals.

Marian Bradley, who is from Clonliffe Road and a member of a residents'
committee, claimed: "There is an unruly system in place people are going
up and walking away with eight tickets when it should be just two per
household.

"There is panic now."

But Peter McKenna, Croke Park Stadium director, said no person received
any more than two tickets with each person having to present a household
bill and identification.

"EUR140,000 worth of tickets were given to the local community which is
unheard of in any other stadium in Ireland or Europe," he said. "What we
would prefer to do is make a local donation into the community because
no matter how many tickets we give out someone will be left disappointed."

Ms Bradley said the residents should be treated better due to the
hardship they encounter due to concerts and football matches being held
at Croke Park.

"We have all the dirt and filth after the concerts, bottles thrown into
gardens and people urinating in gardens," Ms Bradley, who was looking
for Robbie Williams concert tickets for herself and her son, said.

"We can't even take out cars out on match day. And elderly people are
prisoners in their own homes."

The Croke Park Stadium gave out 1,600 tickets worth EUR140,000 in two
lots - with 800 distributed from the ticket box at the stadium in the
early morning, and the remainder in the afternoon.

"The ticket booth opened and distributed all 800 tickets, other people
wanted to wait. If people wanted to queue that is their right to queue,"
Mr McKenna said, adding wristbands were given out so people could return
home and come back.

Ms Bradley said many of the hundreds of people queueing would be in
favour of the tickets being raffled like for last summer's U2 concerts.

"The raffle had its own idiosyncrasies too, a lot of the applications
got, despite of all the checks and balances, tend to be bogus so we
thought it would be better if people came face to face. No matter how
many tickets we give out they are not going to satisfy everyone," the
stadium director said.'