Sinn Féin spokesperson on Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Louise O’Reilly TD, has this afternoon written to the Tánaiste Leo Varadkar to ask if the upcoming World Cup qualifier between Ireland and Portugal has been covered by ticket touting legislation.

Her letter is in response to the fact that tickets are currently listed on ticket exchange and resale websites for up to three times their face value.

Teachta O’Reilly said:

“The Sale of Tickets (Cultural, Entertainment, Recreational and Sporting Events) Act 2021, which aims to stop ticket touting, became law in July.

“While we had reservations regarding the government’s Bill, and submitted amendments to strengthen it, we supported it in the Dáil and Seanad.

“The Bill has the stated aim of stopping ticket touting and relies on either a venue operator applying for an event to be covered by the legislation to stop that event falling victim to ticket touting.

“If the venue operator does not apply, the Bill also affords the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the option to proactively reach out to the operator and have the venue and event covered by the legislation.

“Unfortunately, given ticket exchange and resale companies have tickets for the World Cup qualifier between Ireland and Portugal listed for sale at two and three times their face value, the question must be asked if the operators of the Aviva Stadium, the Football Association of Ireland, or the Tánaiste, Leo Varadkar, applied for the game to be covered by ticket touting legislation?

“If they did, and tickets are still selling for these excessive prices among secondary sellers, then the legislation has clearly failed and, if they didn’t, then this is a shambolic failure on their behalf.

“The Tánaiste must come clean with football fans as to whether his legislation is a failure, or if nobody bothered to make an application for the venue and event to be covered by the ticket touting legislation.

“Whatever the case may be, it is Irish football fans who are losing out.”