Lapdancing club hearing adjourned

An application for a Stringfellows lapdancing club in Dublin has been adjourned until next month after Dublin District Court was told that undisclosed legal issues needed to be resolved by the court.

Judge Mary Collins was told that a hearing on the matter was likely to last for a number of hours. She put the application back for mention before the court on January 4th next.

Local residents and Ruhama, an organisation working with women involved in prostitution, are objecting to the licence. Gardaí are also expected to object when the matter comes before the court again.

Spokeswoman for Ruhama Ger Rowley said after yesterday's court hearing her organisation was concerned at the way lapdancing and prostitution had evolved in Ireland in recent years. Many non-national women were now involved.

Ruhama had encountered around 100 women who had been trafficked into Ireland for the purposes of sexual exploitation. The problem had become a significant one here.

The organisation had encountered at least one non-national woman who came here to work as a lapdancer and sought out its services after becoming involved in prostitution.

"Such a big premises as Stringfellows would be opening not alone in a residential area, it would be promoting the commodification of women's bodies and the selling of women's bodies as entertainment," Ms Rowley said.

Most of the women working in the lapdancing industry were from poor socio-economic backgrounds.

"Often women have to numb themselves psychologically, or numb themselves through drugs.

"It may be promoted as innocent fun, and Stringfellow seems to be using the language that it is professional and high class. But who is it high class for? Is it for the multimillionaires who have made their living from this form of entertainment?"

Those behind the mooted club, including Peter Stringfellow who owns lapdancing clubs throughout the UK, are seeking to open it in a three-storey licensed premises on Parnell Street.

Maria Mhic Mheanmain, a spokeswoman for the North Inner-City Residents' Group, said they did not want the club in an area that had a girls' secondary school, a toyshop, a cinema and local authority flats

She dismissed suggestions by Mr Stringfellow that the club would gentrify the area.

"I think it was an outrageously classist, elitist and downright snobbish statement to make and I think Peter Stringfellow knows full well it will bring down the area, and I think it's very interesting that he chose a working-class area, as opposed to Foxrock, to have his establishment," she said.