Fight For Your Right To Party

On May 4th at Dublin's Russell Court Hotel, the Irish Nightclub Industry Association (INIA) is holding an extraordinary general meeting. A letter recently sent to all members warns that the proposed licensing legislation recently published by the government "could well destroy the nightclub industry in Ireland."

This meeting, the INIA has claimed, is the last opportunity that members will have to prevent their businesses from being effectively restricted to one hour's trading per night.

Strong words from the Association's secretary Nelius O'Connor—but then the last time he called a meeting to discuss the Government's proposals, only four members bothered to turn up. And though the INIA has only a few months to save itself, Nelius reckons just over two hundred members will attend this time around.

With at least 10,000 jobs on the line, the apathy which has been evident to date is alarming. The jobs are at risk because the Government's proposals for new licensing legislation fall far short of the "radical reforms" we were promised. It took almost three years for the Joint Oireachtas Committee's report on liquor licensing laws to be completed—and the end result is nothing more than a proposal that pubs should be allowed to remain open an hour later.

CANNOT SURVIVE
Even more inexplicable is the Government's decision to leave our ludicrous nightclub licensing system in place, with clubs requiring three separate licences—one for liquor, one for food and one for dancing—in order to operate. Clubs must then pay up to £50,000 per year for the exemption orders required to run bar extensions that allow the sale of alcohol until 2am.

However, this is not legally possible on the busiest night of the week. An inadequate and archaic piece of legislation makes a criminal out of anyone who buys or sells a drink on a licensed premises after midnight on Saturday. As one club owner put it: "If we didn't break the law every Saturday night we would go out of business." Just as senseless is that under Irish licensing law, there is no such thing as a "nightclub"—a club is a late-night supper-house that runs dinner-dances.

The proposed new legislation leaves a valuable industry in a quandary. Nightclubs contribute £65 million per year to Dublin's economy according to estimates. Now, however, they may find it impossible to compete with bars. As another club owner complained: "People just won't pay to get into a club when there's almost as much drinking time in a pub for free."

Vinnie McNelis owns Liquid Nightclub in Galway, and serves on the committee of the INIA. Believing most of the Association's 650 members will be put out of business by the current proposals, he wants to see the abolition of the current licensing system, and the creation of a new nightclub licence that permits serving alcohol until 3am, and allows dancing until 4am.

"Clubs cannot survive unless the current two-hour differential between pub and club hours is maintained," McNelis argued. "You'll see a wave of superpubs opening in rural towns and cities and they will wipe out our business very quickly."

Vinnie McNelis is not reflecting official INIA policy—quite simply because there isn't one. "There is no general consensus of opinion yet," Nelius O'Connor revealed.

STIFLED CULTURE
To the outside observer, such disarray is staggering—the new proposals are due to become law in September or October, and instead of lobbying the Government hard for the reforms it failed to deliver, the INIA is still trying to find out what its members want.

Last year one high-profile member, PoD owner John Reynolds, decided the best way to pursue the objective of having the licensing laws changed was to set up his own Dublin Night Club Association (DNCA), which O'Connor refers to as "a breakaway group that hasn't helped our cause." Reynolds insists the DNCA is not a breakaway organisation, but a "new and separate organisation with different aims and only nine members."

"The committee in power at the INIA is from a different era," said Reynolds. "They come from an older generation with little or no understanding of the nature of my business. PoD and Red Box are part of a stifled club culture that could develop into a booming multi-million pound industry, and I decided to lobby the government myself."

Reynolds' analysis reflects the view regularly expressed in the pages of Digital Beat, that Irish clubbing would be the envy of the world if our clubs were allowed to open for longer hours. We also warned (initially as far back as December 1996) that unless the licensing laws were overhauled soon, Irish club culture, with no room for progress, could stagnate and die.

John Reynolds now believes that, "to a certain extent it already has." He is dismayed at how silent dance DJs, club promoters and clubbing columnists have remained on an issue that threatens to destroy their livelihood.

"I told a few journalists who write about clubs that they should be campaigning for a change in the law, but they remain apathetic and lazy because they don't understand or care about club culture."

Reynolds, meanwhile, approached UK dance magazine Muzik, and persuaded editor Ben Turner to launch a campaign to get Irish club licensing laws changed. Turner offered his support largely because of his love for clubbing in Dublin, which he believes would become a clubber's paradise like Ibiza, if the laws were changed.

The campaign will be launched in the June issue of the publication, with Rob Da Bank's feature wittily illustrating just how absurd our licensing laws are. But if Government ministers failed to act after reading a lengthy Joint Oireachtas Committee Report which took three years to prepare, it seems unlikely that a magazine article that took just one weekend to research will make them change their minds.

"Maybe not," says Reynolds, "but I hope that it will embarrass them so much that they will be forced to act."