A chara,– I refer to the article "Croke Park residents feel 'in the dark' about concert plans" of February 6th last. At a meeting of October 28th last, chaired by the Lord Mayor of Dublin in the Mansion House and attended by local TDs, councillors and members of nine local residents groups, including committee members of the association referenced in aforementioned article, Croke Park advised that there would be an announcement later that week of one concert date for June 20th, 2015.
The following Friday, October 31st,the stadium communicated to the local community that the Script would be playing in Croke Park on Saturday, June 20th, 2015 in a community email.
On Saturday, November 15th last, Croke Park hosted a community forum in the stadium. All local residents’ groups received a special notification of this forum on October 30th.
Forum details were also included in a community newsletter that was distributed to 27,000 households within the Croke Park Community area.
This forum was open to any local resident to attend and during the event, Croke Park shared all provisional concert dates with the local community in attendance. Senior stadium management were present and discussed these provisional dates with any local resident who wished to do so. No committee member of the local resident group quoted in the article attended this community forum.
On November 18th last, the presentation from the community forum was shared with the wider community in a community email and included all provisional dates for special events in Croke Park for 2015. This presentation was uploaded to the community section of the Croke Park website where it is still available to view.
Croke Park take its relationship with the local community very seriously and as outlined above has made every effort to share information on upcoming concert dates with the local community.
The stadium is currently working with the Lord Mayor, local TDs, councillors and local community groups to foster a new long-term community agreement and it is most unhelpful for one group of residents to assert that they are being “kept in the dark about concerts” and for their opinions to be published without giving the stadium the right to reply. – Is mise le meas, PETER McKENNA Stadium director, Croke Park, Dublin 3.