Electric Picnic to stay in Stradbally for at least a decade

The Electric Picnic has signed a new 10-year agreement at Stradbally Hall in Co Laois.

The festival will be staying at the Cosby family estate for at least another decade, according to Melvin Benn, managing director of Festival Republic.

“Stradbally is its home. Ten years is the minimum,” he added.

Mr Benn made the announcement as the finishing touches were being put to the festival site. The Electric Picnic runs Friday to Sunday, September 1st-3rd. Tickets are sold out.

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Mr Benn said “significant extra safety measures” will be in place for this year’s festival. “We’ve been working really closely with the Garda, holding tabletop exercises and spending a lot of time with the various agencies, talking through potential scenarios. The whole of Europe has changed their security plan in every aspect of everything that we do.”

He said he did not expect these extra measures to have an undue impact on festival goers. “I don’t think people will notice, particularly. The intention is to allow people to come and enjoy themselves. It’s what we are doing away from them [that’s important].”

Big dome

He was speaking during a media tour of the festival site, which is broadly similar to last year's set-up. New to the festival, and indeed any festival in the world, is the Red Bull Soundome, a steel geodesic dome, fitted with 42 calibrated speakers. It sits atop a 75-capacity dance floor, beneath which are five subwoofer speakers.

The system has been designed and built in Ireland. Music and sound moves above and around those in the dome, and the hope is that the dome will tour to other festivals here and abroad.

This year, the Salty Dog, a stage made from a wooden ship that lies on its side in the woods, is celebrating its 10th anniversary. It has added a new two-storey “bustling and grimy port” to its forest set-up.

Elsewhere in the site’s Trailer Park, a new Hot House restaurant with full waiter service has been added, where punters can order food to their table from a variety of food outlets on the festival site.