Garth Brooks Will Play Ireland Comeback Shows Despite Protests

Garth Brooks' highly anticipated comeback in Ireland is just around the corner, and despite threats of legal action against the five-night concert series at Croke Park, the shows will go on!

Local residents are the ones fighting the series of shows, saying there is an ordinance that rules the park can only have three concerts a year. Croke Park Director Peter McKenna shares that despite this, the shows are allowed and will continue.

“In my view it will go ahead and the five concerts will happen,” McKenna tells the Irish Mirror.

“We had permission for the three One Direction concerts, but you are allowed to apply for a license to run other events,” he explains. “That’s what we’ve done for Garth Brooks. It’s not the first time, we’ve applied for various different events in the past."

However, residents are really upset about this and are calling for a meeting between the council and the public to discuss the issue. Apparently one meeting was scheduled, but now the the Dublin City Council has since said there's no longer one in the books.

According to the Irish Mirror, the council writes in a letter: “There were in excess of 370 submissions/observations lodged in respect of this license application, most of which were extremely detailed in nature. Having regard to the level of detail provided in these submissions/observations it is not proposed to convene a public meeting or take oral submissions with regard to this license application.”

The letter also says that they had enough information to determine that face-to-face meeting was not necessary, which obviously upset many of the residents boycotting the shows.

“They [the council] are happy to meet with the promoters but not with the residents, it is not acceptable,” Pat Gates from the Croke Park Residents Association explains. “It is very emotional for us, we wanted to personally impress on the county council the impact that this has had on us, a letter is a very cold way of expressing that.”

The sold-out Garth Brooks comeback shows will take place July 25-29. Roughly 400,000 people are expected to attend -- 70,000 of which aren't from Ireland.

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