Irish supporters casting a concerned eye over the small-ish allocation of tickets reserved for partisans for competing nations have a voice in the European parliament.
Sean Kelly - the former Kerry County Board Chairman, former GAA President, and current Fine Gael MEP for Ireland South - has lambasted UEFA's ticketing policy from the floor of the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
It is unacceptable that such a minuscule allocation of tickets has been given to the actual supporters of the teams.
We now have a situation in which the loyal Irish fans will not be able to get tickets for these crucial games having spent their hard earned money following our team around the globe for years.
Kelly reminded everyone of the extortionate prices Irish supporters proved willing to pay, witnessed most dramatically in the Giants Stadium in 1994.
We know from the tournaments of the past in Germany, Italy, USA, Korea and Japan, Poland and Ukraine, that Irish supporters will travel with or without tickets.
We will now have a situation in which our fans and the fans of the other teams desperate to get into the stadium will end up being forced to pay extortionate amounts for tickets on the buy-and-sell market.
32% of tickets are held over for the supporters of the competing teams, meaning that each association only receives 16% of the tickets.
Almost as many tickets - 12% of the ground - are held down for UEFA's 'commercial partners'. 6% are taken by those in charge of hospitality, 2% are kept for the national authorities and the host city authorities, 1% each are held for the broadcasters and VIP guests, while 3% are reserved for a curious collective entitled 'The Football Family'.
The remaining 42% are held for the general public.
Kelly said that the best course for UEFA is simply to increase the proportion of the tickets reserved for supporters of the competing nations.
UEFA, as unfortunately is now often the case, have not logically thought through their plans.
There is an easy and fair solution available to UEFA - increase the allocations of tickets for the actual supporters of teams playing in the matches.
I call on UEFA to take action to rectify their mistake, and I'm confident that I would get a strong majority of support for this request were I to put it to my colleagues in the European Parliament.
[RTE.ie]
