THE RELEASE of tickets for the Pope's Mass in Phoenix Park will be delayed due to fears that infrastructure in Dublin will not be able to cope with the amount of people planning to travel by car.
Pope Francis is due to attend the event on August 26, as well as the Festival of Families, which will be held in Croke Park the day before, during the first papal visit to the Republic in almost 40 years.
Organisers of the Phoenix Park Mass, say that tickets will now be issued ten days later than originally planned in order to help people plan their journeys effectively, and to encourage them to use the free public transport available instead of taking cars.
People who had applied for tickets were alerted, via email, to the situation on Tuesday night.
"We had planned to email all tickets by 31 July, but we were unable to do so due to the large number of people who have indicated to us that they intend to travel to the event by car," the email reads.
"We have delayed the issue of tickets to 10 August so as we can finalise the colour coded routes based on the information we have received about where those attending are coming from."
World Meeting of the Families spokeswoman, Brenda Drumm, said: “The infrastructure in Dublin cannot cater for all those people who have indicated to us that they are planning to travel to the WMOF2018 Closing Mass in Phoenix Park by car.
“Overnight we have written to all those who have booked tickets advising them of a revised date of their ticket issue from 31 July to 10 August,” she said.
"This is in order to help people plan their journeys in the most effective way, and to encourage them to change their plans to travel by car and to instead use public transport. There is an enhanced service across all public transport operations for Sunday."
However, people have been assured that their tickets will arrive well in advance.
The Phoenix Park Mass is anticipated to be one of the largest events in Ireland this year, with 500,000 people expected to attend.
30,000 people have also registered to attend the Pastoral Congress of the World Meeting of Families, at the RDS, which will take place in the days before the Pope’s visit.
These will be the largest numbers to attend the event, which is held every three years, since it was first established 24 years ago by Pope John Paul II.
