Toaiseach intervenes in Brooks debacle.

raymon wrote: »

Why are you putting the parts of Dooley's words that suit your agenda in bold ? This is not how people talk.

Eh, it's customary to embolden words which you feel are relevant to the point that you are making. They are the specific parts of what Dooley said in the hearings, which dealt which the nonsense about "assurances". What he said makes it abundantly clear Dooley in no way whatsoever feels that Keegan either gave any assurances, nor was in a position to.

My opinion of this passage is that is seems that Dooley was being accusatory and that he believes that some quasi-assurance was given, or as he calls it "a belief" or an "expectation".

These people should have had no expectation.

You pluck some terms of expression that Dooley used and then suggest that they meant something entirely different than what they actually did and yet you criticize me for just emboldening text within paragraphs??

Lets take a look at that sentence again, with the terms you plucked out, put back in context:

"..when you had that conversation with Mr.Kenna where you gave the impression that you would be supportive, in a general way, without the issue of assurances, we all accept that, we know how the process works, you couldn't have, you wouldn't have the authority to do that at that stage, but you gave him some belief, or he had some expectation, legitimate or otherwise, that if he submitted an application for five concerts and recognizing that the additionality would be required, and if they reached that threshold, then they could legitimately expect a positive outcome but it seems to me as I said, the issues which you refused the five licences were all blindingly obvious to you in advance of that process even beginning.

As can clearly be seen when those terms are in context, when 'belief' and 'expectation' are being discussed in the context of having met the additionality which DCC required of them, which in the main, was to adequately address the concerns of the residents. Keegan himself admits that they would have been granted licences if they had done that. Not just three licences, but five of them and so I'm sure why you would take issue with them having expectations and beliefs in that context, when even Owen Keegan doesn't.

In any case, I still don't see how you could in any way be of the opinion that Dooley (or indeed Aiken or the GAA/Croke Park) were of the opinion that Keegan saying he would "support" the concerts, in their mind meant, that the licence application process would be circumvented. In short: your opinion that these people thought the way you claimed they did.. is completely baseless.

This amount of concerts was unprecedented - there was no "threshold" What threshold is there?

The word "threshold" was not used with regards to the amount of concerts there would be. It was said with regards to satisfying the needs of residents. In other-words, what Dooley was asking Keegan was what percentage of happy residents it would have taken in order for Croke Park to have fulfilled the "additionality" that he stated they had not "fully" met.

Dan_Solo wrote: »

1) Support does not equal guarantee of licensing.
2) If Croke Park residents were to be disrupted to the point where owning property there was a conflict of interest, this adds more weight to 5 concerts being absolutely untenable.
3) Why does the record number of legitimate objections disappear whenever someone mentions the minority of proven false ones?

(1) The fault for that is on Keegan's side. Nothing made him say it.

(2) misses the point and is extremely dangerous. The question of whether or not 5 concerts goes ahead is the balance between the public interest in the concerts and the the disruption to local interests. The person tasked with making that decision should neither be a local property owner or a chairman of the Garth Brooks fan club. In this case he was the former which makes his decision questionable. If he was the latter and the concerts went ahead, there would be plenty condemning him.

(3) points clearly to an organisation behind the objections rather than genuine objections from local residents. When you see the later emergence of a further splinter group, you see that all is not what it seems.

Thoie wrote: »

Their statements at the committee were at odds with some of their statements to journalists a week or so earlier, when things like "we knew it was a big ask" (horrible phrase) were being bandied about.

That's not at odds with what they said at the committee. Aiken and Croke Park both said as much at the hearings but added, that they were also given the impression that if their application included the additionality which was requested (which in the main was to adequately address the concerns of the residents) then the DCC had no problems. Keegan has confirmed at the hearings that he gave that impression also, when at the hearing he indicated that had they gone the "full way" with the residents, he doesn't see why they wouldn't have received licences for all five nights.

They made some changes to the event management plan in late June and submitted those, so obviously even at that stage they'd been told things weren't "enough".

Two points: 1) It's par for the course to ask for updated event management plans. Indeed, even when granting the three licenes, they still then asked for further updated plans and so that in no way is suggestive of of them not having done enough to warrant the granting of a five night licence. 2) If, as you imply, it was stated to them that they needed to do more with regards to addressing the concerns of residents, and they did not that, then Aiken, Croke and the GAA would not all be saying that they were given no indications that the DCC wanted them to do more: "not even a hint" to quote Duffy.

And even with changing certain things there were three things they couldn't change, even with the best will in the world:

• The Monday and Tuesday are weekdays, with the additional traffic that always comes of that
• That the majority of people going to work go on Mondays and Tuesdays
• That locals would, by then, already have had 3 days of disruption/disturbed sleep

I agree 100% and so begs two questions: 1) Then why did Keegan offer to put doing a forth night to Keogan, which would have been a Monday (which would have been a weekday) and 2) Why is Keegan claiming that had Croke Park gone the "full way" that they would have been granted licences for the five nights. What is it that Croke Park or Aiken could have done to negate the (genuine) issues you raised above.

As an aside: Questions regarding the above two points were put to Keeegan at the Committee hearing but he cleverly skirted his way around answering them, to any sufficient degree at least. He said he made a mistake offering the fourth night, but that he did this only because he wanted to go as far as he could, what with it being huge for the city and all. A bigger load of waffle you wouldn't hear. Of course, he only said this so could cut his critics off at the pass and flog himself before others got a chance to. Bertie would be proud. Then when asked just what it was that Croke Park could have done to mitigate the issues which he claims meant they had not gone the "full way" with the residents.. he just totally copped out of answering the question and said that that was an issue for Croke Park and the residents not him. As I said before: slippery than a bar of soap.

The faux-shock that the extra licenses weren't granted is more than a little disingenuous.

There was nothing fake about their shock. None of those men appeared remotely disingenuous. In fact, they were resolute and all came across as being genuine in the their expressions of emotion. Whether people agree with the decision made or not, I fail to see how anyone could think they were being fake.

Until the decision has been made, it's not normal to give a yes or no answer in advance (otherwise you're circumventing the proper process). If I apply to build a 200 story building on O'Connell bridge, it would not be reasonable of me to expect the go-ahead, but I wouldn't get a definitive, official answer until the end of the process.

Now you are just doing what Keegan did and strawmanning. Nobody asked for absolutes. Nobody suggested they should have been given and nobody has suggested that they were given. As Dooley said: "..you gave the impression that you would be supportive, in a general way, without the issue of assurances, we all accept that, we know how the process works, you couldn't have, you wouldn't have the authority to do that..".

a) Why would his job have been on the line? Someone getting a contrary injunction is not a judgement on the planning decision/process. If there had been a statutory judicial review (which is a completely different thing) which found that the planning process had not been followed/was not fairly decided, then that might impact his job. The fact that no-one has bothered their arse applying for a review would indicate to me that they know it would lose, otherwise they'd have been in there like flies on s***, to use the vernacular.

My comments were not suggesting that he someone did not follow the planning application process. They were regarding the fact that this man has made embarrassing decisions already, which have had to be reversed and he saw that there was potential for that happening again and so decided, imo, to negate the potential of that somewhat, and refuse two licences to show that he was not completely ignoring agreements that Croke Park had with with the residents and more importantly, the limit of three non-sporting events imposed by An Bord Pleanala. Yes, it wsa perfectly legal for the DCC to grant a licence for as many nights as they wished to, but that in no way means that the courts could not reverse their decision if they saw fit. Even if the potential outcome of a high court or supreme court ruling wasn't worrying him, he wouldn't have wanted to be seen as a city boss sticking two fingers to An Bord Pleanala, which he would have been if he had granted all five licences and the injunction proceedings went ahead.

b) The objections part of the process is not a speed reading test. It's not about how fast or otherwise he (or his team) can read. If there had only been a single objection on May 21st, and it was written in crayon on the back of a postcard, the decision would still have been issued around the beginning of July. It's been pointed out numerous times on this thread that the process takes 10-12 weeks. This is not a surprise to anyone who is used to this kind of thing. If the promoter had wanted an answer earlier, he should have submitted the application back when he sold the tickets, instead of waiting nearly 3 months to submit it.

Okay, firstly: the window for public objections is five weeks and so can you explain why you are saying the process takes 10-12? Secondly: the deadline for applications is 10 weeks. If the process took 10-12 weeks, then decisions would not be possible to be reached (on eleventh hour applications at least) until two weeks AFTER they took place, if it took 12 weeks and the day of the concert, if it took 10.

It's still my opinion that the promoters were trying to pull a fast one and delayed their application until the last possible minute in the hopes that it would be "too big to fail" at that stage, and the proximity of the concerts could be used to bully DCC into passing all 5 concerts without any regard for the impact on the locality.

This is just false.

Firstly, the application and event management plan were submitted a full four weeks before the deadline and so it was not even close to a "last minute" submission and secondly, DCC have never indicated that the didn't have enough time to process the application and so I'm not sure why others keep implying they didn't. They had from April 17th to review the event management plans and the statutory meetings all went swimmingly, according to all concerned, and in any case, to quote Dooley again:

"..seems to me as I said, the issues which you refused the five licences were all blindingly obvious to you in advance of that process even beginning.."

Wishiwasa Littlebitaller wrote: »

Eh, we knew that on Thursday (6m 42sec):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGYgbAEdjZw

I'm beginning to wonder if anyone who thinks DCC did their job well.. actually watched any of the hearings at all.

We watched them, we are just not all obsessing over every minute sentence and inflection and so are not forensically taking it apart to try and make it fit an agenda.

bumper234 wrote: »

We watched them, we are just not all obsessing over every minute sentence and inflection and so are not forensically taking it apart to try and make it fit an agenda.

I watched it. I remembered it.

Anyone else that watched it, would also have remembered it, or at least should have.

If I watched a film and remembered a piece of dialogue, would that mean I was obsessing over every minute sentence and inflection? As for forensically taking it apart: it's called quoting someone. I always included the context and emboldened the parts I felt relevant. Of course, you also get criticized when you embolden text too and so I guess you can't win.

Funny though, how you have no problem taking a few words of Peter Aiken and making a mountain of that, to suit your agenda. Guess what Aiken / Croke Park say on the RTE news is fair game to use, but somehow doing so with what council officials say in testimony of a Dail hearing, isn't.

Dan_Solo wrote: »

I'm wondering if anybody who thinks it wasn't a cack-handed and lame attempt at pressurising DCC into reversing a perfectly legitimate planning decision, conducted by the usual roster of gombeen fatnecks, was watching MTV while the hearings were or something.

You think the hearings were an attempt to pressurize the DCC into reversing their decision?

Oh and it was not the decision that landed them in the Oireachtas. It was the timing of it (three weeks before concerts were due to take place was scandalous) and also of course, the fact that all concerned say they were given no indication that further additionality was required of them.

Wishiwasa Littlebitaller wrote: »

Great: one user accuses me of obsessively and forensically examining them and another finds it hard to believe I actually watched them. Beautiful.



Why would he give Aiken / GAA a hard time? They applied for a licence on time and attempted to do all what was asked of them. Keegan got grilled because his ineptitude of refusing licences for concerts, that 160,000 people were due to attend, just three weeks later, caused this country international embarrassment. Plus, all the people involved say he gave no indications of his dissatisfaction with the additionality with which they were requited to provide. It was gross incompetence on not just the part of Keegan, but the DCC as a whole.



LOL.

Says the guy who plucked just two words from them and then stated these words meant that Dooley, Duffy, McKenna and Aiken all thought that because Keegan had said he supported the concerts going ahead, that this to them meant that he would "circumvent" the licence application procedure.

At least I am backing up my opinions with paragraphs of dialogue and video footage from the hearings and not just plucking two words from what was said and filling in the blanks myself with groundless and nonsensical opinions.

Gonna leave you to it, your obsession with this has gone beyond funny and is now hitting the disturbing territory. Carry on posting walls of text and trying to make people believe your not a Brooksie fan.

raymon wrote: »

Like others - I think my discussion with you is proving far too difficult.

All I did was ask you why you claimed that Dooley, McKenna, Aiken and Duffy thought that Keegan saying he supported the five concerts, to them meant that he would circumvent the licence planning process with a nod and a wink. They where your words and you have failed to give any rational or reasonable explanation why you would think that those men would think that. Saying they felt is was an assurance is one thing, but saying that they felt the licence planning process would be circumvented is quite another.

I would just like to leave this with you:

http://newstalk.ie/player/listen_back/7/11407/18th_July_2014_-_Lunchtime_Part_2

It should take you 3 minutes . Fast Forward to 5 minutes and listen for three minutes - Mick Clifford and Jonathan Healy are laughing about how biased the committee was against Keegan and DCC .

I agree with these two pundits - in my opinion it was an acutely biased committee. Im glad they cant make findings !!

Anyway - carry on

I listened and thanks for at least providing something in an attempt to back up your assertions regarding Dooley, Aiken etc and I suppose the radio clip did go some way to giving credence to the notion that the committee members didn't treat both sides equally. However, nothing in it, that I heard at least, in any way justifies the comments that you made, let alone gives them grounds and so, I agree, lets leave it there, as I think if you haven't done so by now, you are highly unlikely to.