Walking MCD's Highway to Hell

The public won't be getting to hear most of the detail of the fall-out from last year's complaints about MCD concerts because MCD have settled a High Court action taken against it by Sophie Ridley, its event controller.

Judge Mary Laffoy agreed to strike out the case on consent of both parties on Monday two weeks ago.

I've been able to gather some details of what was at issue here and reported this The Sunday Times. In February we reported how Ridley was taking the High Court action because she believed MCD was "scapegoating" her for the problems of last summer.

MCD had commissioned Noel Conroy, the former garda commissioner, to compile a report in to a series of event control problems. MCD came under a lot of pressure to review things after a flurry of negative media coverage including the full Liveline treatment on RTE Radio 1.

Henry Mountcharles was one of those interviewed by Conroy. Speaking to me before that February article, Mountcharles confirmed that he had warned MCD that he would not allow Slane to be used for concerts again until MCD addressed the problems that occured at the Oasis concert. Last year he had said he was "far from happy" with the organisation at the gig.

One of the most serious issues that arose at Slane '09 was the suspension of ticket scanning for people coming in at the Dublin entrace. People were allowed in without having their tickets scanned for a 30 minute period.

MCD decided to suspend Ridley, a former tour manager with Simply Red, after a preliminary inquiry by Michael Slattery found a series of event control problems at the concerts. Conroy's more detailed report concluded Ridley was to blame and MCD said it accepted these findings. It then wrote to its suspended manager to invite her to attend a disciplinary hearing.

At this stage Ridley went to the High Court seeking an injunction against MCD on the basis that her guilt had been pre-judged because MCD had said it already accepted she was at fault.

Ridley also alleged that MCD had targetted her because she had raised concerns that budget cuts had affected crowd safety at big concerts including Oxegen '09. She also alleged that MCD had engaged in fraudulant practices with bands like U2 by "recharging" her time to the bands.

In his affidavit Denis Desmond, the MCD boss, denied this. He said recharging was a standard practice worldwide. He also said Conroy had not identified concert budgets as an issue and Ridley's claims were simply those of a "disgruntled employee".

Before these claims and counter-claims could be aired MCD and Ridley agreed to settle out of court.

There is no Slane concert this year but it will be interesting to see if the rest of MCD's concerts run smoothly this summer without Ridley.