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PICKING UP RIGHT where last week’s column left off — straight in, no messing about today — Fifa’s plan to sell off a major stake in the World Cup has been defeated by a boycott (which the FAI was a part of), while Ireland’s matches against Israel are slated to go ahead (because the FAI won’t boycott them). Go figure.

The FAI further confirmed this week that while some Israeli fans will be able to attend their ‘home’ game against Ireland, which will take place in Hungary, no tickets will be made available to Ireland fans for either match. Our ‘home’ game will take place in Serbia, because apparently we were only allowed to choose countries that were responsible for setting in motion the chain of events that led to World War I.

Now, at the risk of positioning myself as moral arbiter for the world, nobody should want to attend these matches. Yes, there may be some territorial sense of injustice that Israel will have their fans present for at least one match, and yes, that won’t be pleasant for the Irish staff or players, but lest we forget, those staff and players do also have the option of boycotting these matches. Second of all, think of how much you’d have to pay for a ticket if a limited amount were put on sale anyway.

And I know what you’re thinking. But Carl, don’t you remember five years ago, when Fine Gael ended the scourge of ticket touting once and for all? And I understand where you’re coming from, reader whom I’ve invented for rhetorical purposes. After all, in July 2021, the Fine Gael Facebook page proudly declared: “Ticket touting is now ILLEGAL in Ireland. The bill was first introduced over 4 years ago by Noel Rock and has now been officially signed by the president.”

Back before he lost his seat in 2020, tackling ticket touts was Noel Rock’s whole thing. He even did a big Celtic Tiger era-esque photoshoot about it which you might recall, where he had some guy dress up with a cigar, a gold chain, and a handful of tickets. He then proceeded to kick the bloke in the arse in front of a bunch of cameras. The message was clear: no more ticket touts! And they say Fine Gael don’t solve problems. Now, to take a large sip of coffee and check Fine Gael’s social media channels from this week.

Oh, what’s this? Why it’s a dispatch from the FG Twitter account, posted just this Thursday.

“With tickets for Manchester United v Leeds United at Croke Park being resold for up to €425, John Clendennen is calling for ticket touts to be held to account, & to ensure fans are protected from being ripped off when a major event comes to Ireland.” Oh, but I thought we—? I thought Noel—? No?

First, the answer to the question I know you’re all asking: it turns out that John Clendennen is the name of a Fine Gael TD. From Offaly, apparently. Second of all, welcome to the ticket touting time loop. Yes, after making ticket touting ILLEGAL over five years ago, Fine Gael is back to make ticket touting even more ILLEGAL. It apparently isn’t illegal enough after the first go-around, and now we need to hold the ticket touts to account, because apparently having a law against something is an insufficient means by which to do that. Maybe they didn’t use enough caps lock. Clendennen has said the onus is on the “relevant authorities” to enforce this law, overlooking somewhat the fact that he is a representative of the most relevant authority of all.

Ah, to be Noel Rock right now. Your legacy in ashes. Your crowning achievement in the mud. And the worst insult of all, you have to pay some scrounger over the odds for a ticket to the funeral. And to top it all off you have me making my little jokes about you in a column. That’s what you get for trying to help people who like to attend events, Rock! Not on my watch!

While ticket touting, annoying though it may be, is by no means the chief concern facing the Irish public, the time loop is a good illustration of how the country has been run over the last— well, let’s just say, while. It’s been like this a while. We pretend to solve problems and the can gets kicked down the road and some scumbag charges you a few hundred quid to watch. A case in point: HAP has been one of Ireland’s ‘answers’ to the housing crisis since it was fully rolled out in 2017, and a decade on, there are only two counties in the whole country that have homes to rent within HAP limits as of June 2026.

We actually know what the Irish public considers to be the biggest issues facing them these days, partly thanks to this recent poll, and partly because we’ve been living through a housing and cost-of-living crisis for many years now, so what the fuck else would it be? Well, granted, a lot of stuff is on fire these days, which is fairly pressing, but the housing thing has been a problem for longer.

Now, not to tell the pollsters how to do their jobs, but it occurs to me that housing and the cost-of-living are actually the same issue. Two sides of the same two euro coin that’s somehow not even enough to get you a bottle of Rock Shandy. If housing were affordable — and I mean really affordable, not the government’s interpretation of the word that necessitates two people each on salaries above or approaching six figures — then it wouldn’t actually matter as much that you have to pay so much money for fuel or food or school clothes. How can we separate the cost-of-living crisis from how much it costs to actually have a place to live? The cost-of-living crisis is only as bad as it is because we’re spending so much on rents, or deposits, or mortgage repayments, or renting while saving for a deposit, ad nauseam.

Alas, the housing crisis is little different from the problem of ticket touts — at least not when it comes to the government’s messaging. Every so often we’re told that a solution has been found, that the rules have been rewritten, that the fella in the gold chain with the cigar has been Bishop Brennaned up the arse once and for all… only to check the scores a little while later and find that nothing has changed. The problem that was solved hasn’t been solved at all and the public continues to languish, paying hundreds of euros to watch Man United play Leeds in a summer friendly (Christ knows why), paying thousands per month to share an apartment, and thinking to themselves “Weren’t we told that something was being done about this? Wasn’t there a photoshoot?”

But not to worry. Now John Clendennen is on the case, just like Noel Rock before him. He’ll get a law passed, and they’ll make touting illegal again, just like they did five years ago. And five years later we’ll do it all again. Get your tickets here.

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