THE FOUNDER AND organiser of the Forever Young festival, which took place over the weekend in Co Kildare, has defended a decision to prevent day ticket-holders from entering the site on Saturday after heavy rain flooded the campsite.
The 80s nostalgia-themed music festival took place at Palmerstown House Estate in Naas, but ticket holders who were not already inside the grounds of the festival by 12pm on Saturday were told they wouldn’t be admitted.
The festival has stated that Saturday tickets will be valid for 2024′s Forever Young and that customers can avail of a refund instead.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio’s Liveline, organiser Sharon Alston responded to a complaint from a caller who had attended the festival and had said that poor organisation had led to flooding toilets and untraversable muck.
The caller, John, told the show that the different areas of the festival had no textured walkways to prevent festival goers from slipping after the heavy rain and that the smell of toilets was overwhelming.
“The water had come down from the toilet area and you were basically flooded walking around with your boots and your gear in contaminated water,” he said.
“You could smell it. The toilets were 10 meters away from the food area, where you get your coffee and breakfast roll.
“They’re using the excuse that Glastonbury had the same problem. Not necessarily, they have walkways at Glastonbury. They don’t have toilets next to the food area,” he said.
“It was a complete mud pie as you can imagine. There was a lack of organization there with the facilities that you’re paying good money for. You weren’t expecting to be covered in muck from head to toe,” he said.
Addressing John’s complaint, Alston said that staff at the festival did the best they could in spite of the adverse weather.
“Contrary to popular belief, we had a huge amount of preparation for the predicted rain that was to come but we got four times the amount of the predicted rain. It was a deluge,” she said.
“It was just uncontrollable. It rained solidly overnight and that caused issues around the site. For a 900 acre estate, you can’t cover everything in walkways.
“The safety officers that work on Forever Young are the best in Ireland.
“They will tell us exactly when things need to be done. We brought in double the team that we would have had over the weekend because of the weather.”
The safety team had determined that it was unsafe to allow more people to be at the festival’s arena area because mud would slow down evacuations in the event of an emergency, she said.
“It was a horrible thing to have to do. But it was 100% a safety decision.”
She added that the decision to close the festival to admissions was made at 10.30am on Saturday and communicated on social media by 11am.
“This is just one of those things that happens but our media and PR manager ruptured her appendix on Friday. So she would not normally deal with all these sorts of things and she wasn’t around.”
Alston added that some toilets at the venue were out of order for maintenance, not because waste was leaking into the surrounding area.
“They moved quite a few of the toilets, because the actual flooding wasn’t necessarily the toilets, there was flooding of water around the toilet.
“We re-sited toilets several times over the weekend, because there’s a real health and safety hazard when the toilets can’t be accessed to be serviced and to be emptied.”
The festival featured Hothouse Flowers, Bananarama and Jason Donovan, among other acts.
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