So pissed off with all the chopping & changing of the laws. Did I hear correctly that off-licenses will close at 10pm?! Also ridiculous that theatre license holders have to apply for expensive exemptions to open late. Insert lots of swear words here.

Yeah, offies closed at 10 (eh, so you buy it earlier instead!) and no more late opening ours for venues. Clubs on a Sunday night will open at 11 and have to close by one!!

Madness.

it starts today i think.
off licence closing at 10.
all clubs/ venues/ pubs closing at 2.30 (1am on sunday except on bank holidays weekends).

for example clubs will be running from 11 to 2 (then they're supposed to stop the music) on saturday, if the main dj is playing two hours (usually they do) i.e from midnight to 2, you will have only one dj to support him and you will hopefully expect all your crowd to arrive before midnight so your main dj won't play in front of no one.

and concerning off licences, there is no way you can go to a bar to see other friends before going to a party now as you're not really allowed to bring alcohol in a bar. no choice you'll just have to go straight from the off licence to the party.

and for those expecting to get taxi on a saturday night, hope you don't mind waiting for hours.

and if by any chance you were used to go to a club on sundays (reggae in the button factory or club in the academy or end up in Sin) don't bother, the venue-promoter will have to stop running the club because they won't be able to afford opening the venue only for 2 hours.


say goodbye to your nightlife.

Fianna Fail are great. thanks to a majority of short term thinking morons who voted them back in..

the answer: raves

Everyone is complaining about this now, but come on, it's a bit too late. I wonder how many people who rant about this actually tried to do something about it. Even e-mails to your TDs, which take but a few minutes to write, would have made a bit of impact if enough of people had bothered doing anything about it. The lunch time protest outside the Dail had a poor turnout also.

If only people paid a bit more attention to The Beastie Boys...

Massive knacker drinking session at 2AM one night on Kildare St.?

Excellent point (the lobbying one, not the Beastie Boys one), and one that came up around the time of that awful Rock The Vote campaign. Lobbying TDs in large numbers is much more effective than most people realise. Their jobs depend on it. (A good number of Dail seats swing on only a few hundred votes or less. My former local TD once kept his seat by only FIVE VOTES.)

From a past job, I saw this in effect. Once people organise themselves and mobilise for a concrete objective in their locality, they have real, quantifiable influence on the decision-making process. Anyone who believes this isn't true is either uninformed or copping out.

Pub opening hours may be a trivial concern compared to Ireland's poor education and public health infrastructures, but if you feel strongly enough about it then get busy. (After all, from now on you can't go bellyaching about it down the local very long each evening...)