Irish gig-goers are hoping that the government will follow the example set in Britain last week and introduce new legislation that imposes greater penalties on ticket touts.

Auctioning tickets over the internet has become so commonplace in Britain that, last week, the British culture secretary Tessa Jowell held a summit on ticket touts attended by ticket agencies and promoters. A plan was developed at the summit to quash this growing industry.

Measures such as face value refunds for fans unable to attend an event and the creation of a website where tickets can be exchanged at face value by the Concert Promoters Association are included in the plan.

Eamonn O’Connor, managing director of Ticketmaster Ireland, said legislation must be introduced in the Republic to tackle touts as ticket agents and promoters are powerless to deal with them.

‘‘Legislation has to be passed so that we can deal with this. At the moment we can just track duplications and forgeries as we have invested heavily in barcoding systems and also we keep tickets to a minimum per person,’’ O’Connor said.

Posted: 08|6|06 at 2:04 pm. Filed under: Auction News.