Liam Herrick

But I mean, we aren't having those hard conversations.

We're having the lowest common denominator, which is either throwing money at things in a random, it seems quite random way, or perhaps and also looking for scapegoats.

And I mean, you know, there is a divisive discourse coming about and certain comments this week, urban versus rural and all the rest of it.

That's not very helpful either.

There's just a bit of a sense at the moment that the government isn't really showing leadership on this and is moving from that medium-term planning.

Well, I don't know.

I mean, from a free market perspective, I mean, it does seem competition law and monopolies are a real issue here.

You know, you have had a massive concentration for the large acts.

And, you know, there have been tokenistic kind of gestures at price transparency and all the rest of it.

I mean, the measures that were there to stop touting have, it seems, resulted in a situation where the large ticket distributors are effectively doing the touting themselves.

I mean, friends who bought tickets for the World Cup before we didn't qualify and have had great difficulty dealing with FIFA and trying to sell them on.

But I mean, the way that FIFA has behaved around the World Cup is absolutely outrageous, you know, and the prices that have been charged.

So there's a real problem there.

Well, look, the one thing that struck me with the Ryder Cup piece, I mean, you can argue if golf is culture, if golf is even sport, but... That's a whole other day's work.

Like, you know, I was down at Hurley, so I said, if they're hurling, you can get in for 20 or 30 quid.

League of Ireland's great value.

International football's great value.

Ryder Cup is a different ballgame, but...

The real question for me, talking about public spending, is, you know, how much have we spent to bring the Ryder Cup to Ireland and what are we really getting back for it?

You know, and it's the same applies for the Irish Open, the same applies for the NFL, that a lot of the time the state is bankrolling these events.