Sparks fly over tickets controversy
The enforcement of a ticket only restriction on people turning up for the postponed Opera Festival fireworks display on Wexford quayfront on Sunday, November 5, will be carried out by private security personnel employed by an events management company.
The security arrangement was outlined at a meeting of Wexford Borough District Council when councillors didn’t hold back in expressing their frustration over the Opera Festival’s failure to apply to the planning department this year for a licence to facilitate a crowd of more than 5,000 on the quayfront, forcing the introduction of tickets to control the crowd.
‘They created a fiasco. This should not happen again’, said Cllr. Anthony Kelly, claiming that councillors were left in the dark about the problem until the last minute, after they attended a Council meeting on the afternoon the news broke and no-one had the courtesy to inform them what was happening.
Cllr. David Hynes said councillors received an email from the County Council that evening telling them about the crowd control measure. ‘None of the councillors were asked their opinion in any way. It really is a slap in the face. It’s a total lack of respect. People are coming up to us and asking us what is happening and we can’t tell them. When something is wrong you don’t try and mend it.’
‘It’s not the festival committee that runs the town,’ said Cllr. Hynes. ‘A lof of people don’t go to the operas but the fireworks is the one thing that everyone goes to. From the point of view of public relations, this is a total disaster’. He asked Council officials to go back to the Opera Festival and request that the event be changed back to the way it was. ‘We have two weeks to rectify the situation’, he added.
Cllr. Frank Staples said councillors should have been told about it well in advance ‘because people expect us to know what’s going on in the town’. If you weren’t on Facebook you wouldn’t have known at all.’
‘This is completely down to Wexford Festival Opera. Is it the case that we were thrown to the wolves when it came to responsibility for this ticket fiasco’, said Cllr. Carthy, also asking if the Spiegeltent festival is reducing capacity on the quayfront for the fireworks display.
Cllr. Mick Roche wanted to know which officials at ‘the top table’ knew about the lack of a licence.
Cllr. George Lawlor said he believed the festival should have come straight out and admitted that a mistake had been made. ‘You need a licence for an event with more than CLLR GER CARTHY: ‘This is completely down to Wexford Festival Opera’. CLLR LISA MCDONALD: ‘Let our children go down and enjoy themselves the way they have always done’. Picture by Skypix MAYOR JIM MOORE: ‘It behoves us all to make sure this is going to be an enjoyable event’.