“Minister, you couldn’t make this up.”
Bruce Springsteen got a shout-out in the Dáil on Thursday as Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty raised the issue of high hotel prices in Dublin to Transport Minister Eamon Ryan.
The Boss is set to play three nights in the RDS next May, with Doherty using the gigs to highlight the shortage of affordable hotel rooms in the capital.
He reiterated claims from a caller on radio station Ocean FM that it is cheaper for a group of Springsteen fans in Sligo to attend a concert from the Boss in Rome in Italy than in Dublin.
“Bruce Springsteen is coming to town next year to play three nights at the RDS and so out of control have hotel prices become that we had a caller called Stephen from the West who called into Ocean FM today,” the TD told Ryan.
“He explained that the cost to see Bruce Springsteen and to stay in Dublin for a night was so expensive that he looked at alternatives.
“He found that it’s €200 cheaper for the concert ticket, the flight and a night in Rome than it is to travel up the road to Dublin and stay a night here in a hotel after the concert.
“So Stephen and his friends are flying off to Rome to see Bruce Springsteen in the Circus Maximus instead of the RDS, replacing one circus from another.”
Doherty said Ireland has a Transport Minister who wants people to travel less while the accommodation crisis in Dublin is making them travel more.
“Minister, you couldn’t make this up so I’m going to ask you once again as I’ve been doing for weeks now,” he added.
“What is the Government going to do about the rip-off hotel prices that are being charged in this city?”
In response, the Transport Minister agreed it was “a real issue” that “has to stop”.
“We have to find ways in which it’s not so expensive,” he told the Dáil.
“It’ll be very difficult, it’s not an easy challenge but the [Tourism] Minister Catherine Martin will work.
“I think the Tanáiste and the Department of Enterprise also have a role.
“I worked in tourism and like a lot of industries in Ireland, it works well… when you’ve got industry groups, which there are, to come together to say: ‘We can’t have prices at that level’.
Ryan added that while high hotel prices are “hugely profitable” and “very tempting” for the industry, it was his belief that, in the long run, they will “kill the industry” and that they have to stop.
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