Taoiseach Leo Varadkar is confident legislation allowing bars and nightspots to operate until 6.30am, will be passed in time for summer, aligning with European standards, and said he is urging Justice Minister Helen McEntee to accelerate the legislation, highlighting its importance and advocating for its swift enactment.
The proposed legislation, set to be published in the next few months and before the summer recess, aims to enhance nightlife in Irish cities and towns.
Varadkar reassured that the focus is not on widespread availability of alcohol late into the night but on facilitating limited late licences for specific venues while collaborating with Gardaí, who support the draft legislation for its potential to mitigate anti-social behaviour by staggering crowd dispersal.
He said “the advice from An Garda Síochána is that it’s fine as long they have a say in which venues get licensed and which don’t. They’re actually comfortable with that, because instead of everyone emptying out on the streets in a very short window of time, that will be staggered. That could actually be helpful from a public order point of view.”
“Irish licensing laws in this area are archaic. We want to be able to have venues and nightlife like you would see here in Bucharest or Berlin or London or Barcelona or Lisbon or any other European city. Irish people have experience of those cities and wonder why we can’t have that in our country.”
“It’s not the comprehensive reform of the licensing legislation which was hoped for. It’s something more bespoke, more targeted, particularly around allowing late licences for nightclubs and cultural events, so that we can have in our cities and towns the kind of nightlife they have in pretty much every other European country. It’s not going to be a huge number of licences. I wouldn’t like to create the impression that alcohol will be widely available in every pub, hotel and nightclub until well into the early hours of the morning. That’s not the case.”
