‘European tourists laugh at us for closing so early’: Nightclub owners welcome 6am law change

Nightclub operators have welcomed plans for extended opening hours across the industry as a “fantastic improvement” which will increase profits and allow new venues to open.

Under the new plans approved by Cabinet on Tuesday, pubs would be allowed to remain open until 12.30am seven days a week, while nightclubs would be allowed to open until 6am.

The plans would also give pubs the option of opening from 10.30am to 12.30am, seven days a week, while opening hours for late bars will remain at up to 2.30am.

[ Proposed extension of nightclubs opening hours aimed at helping sector that is ‘dying on its feet’, says McEntee ]

[ Licensing law reform to see pubs open until 12.30am and nightclubs until 6am ]

Ian Redmond, who runs Tramline in Dublin, welcomed the announcement, though he said the industry’s “main focus is the abolishing of the 200-year-old archaic licensing laws.”

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“The area that causes us the most problems is the Special Exemption Order (SEO) system. Having to pre plan up to 6 weeks in advance what nights we intend to open doesn’t permit us to book in last minute events such as a sports team celebration or after party for a touring act playing a gig in Dublin,” he said.

“We hope that the Bill will be sensible and abolish the SEO system, replace it with an annual Nightclub Permit that is a reasonable cost given that we already pay a substantial fee to The Revenue Commissioners for our annual seven day Publican’s Licence.”

Buzz O’Neill, who runs LGBT+ nightlife events in Dublin, echoed Mr Redmond’s comments, saying much of the existing staffing difficulties had been down to the uncertainty caused by the requirement for SEOs every two weeks.

This made it difficult to predict profits month-to-month, or to give staff certainty on their working hours. If that requirement was removed, it would mean staff “will be offered more reliable hours”.

Mr O’Neill previously ran the Sunday Social for 14 years before it closed due to restrictive opening hours impacting on profit earlier this summer. He said he looked forward to reopening the club as extended operating hours would make it more tenable.

“I honestly don’t think every club will go for 6am, but there will be an uptake of opening until 4am or 4.30am,” he said.

Ian Keogh, owner of the live music and nightclub venue The Sound House, also foresees most clubs opting to close at 4am or 4.30am at first, though he said there was “plenty of evidence of demand for later closing times”.

“We can see from other European countries that the demand is there even if it is alien to us officially in Ireland. Unofficially, there are plenty of lock-ins and underground events showing the proof of demand here too,” he said.

“We’re talking about a fundamental change in how we behave when we go out now. You’ll have the usual after work crowd and now you’ll have the late crowd who don’t even go out until midnight.”

Venues would need to plan for staffing challenges, which could involve “offering some sort of premium rate for staying later,” Mr Keogh said.

“There are questions around how this will work but overall this is a positive day. A 1934 law is currently governing modern discoteques. We’ll be modernising society with these changes.”

Rangan Arulchelvan, managing director of the Russell Court Hotel — which houses Dicey’s, Krystle and Bond nightclub on Dublin’s Harcourt Street, said the news was “really positive” for the industry and would be embraced by the clubs he operates.

“We’ve come a long way as an industry. We’ve been operating on Harcourt Street since the 1980s when we had to close early on a Saturday because Sunday was mass day. But nowadays we still have European tourists laughing at us for closing so early in comparison to them, so this is an important step,” he said.

“At the moment people don’t even want to pay admission fees because late bars open the same length of time as clubs. So that’s an area we are losing out on at the moment. We will see huge improvement in terms of revenue there.”

The new laws are expected to be enacted by next year. Nightclub operators said they hoped it would come into effect by springtime, to ensure a profitable summer period.

Meanwhile, Garda sources said there was concern in the force the new opening hours would give rise to significant public order challenges. They believed rosters would need to be changed to ensure more gardaí were on duty on the streets through the night, adding this would require the expansion of the force to even keep pace with current policing demands.

“Generally, the longer people drink the more they drink and the messier it gets,” said one source. “And if you’re making big changes to the licencing hours then you need to make big changes to policing. If you don’t do that, you might lose control in some areas completely and it takes a huge effort to undo that, we saw that in parts of Dublin city centre during Covid.”

Other gardaí said the new legislation was coming at a bad time for policing as the force was already under pressure, especially in central Dublin.

“You’ve already had (Garda Commissioner) Drew Harris saying 15,000 (Garda) members won’t be enough to maintain the kind of (policing) service we have now and we’re still not up at 15,000 yet,” said one source. “So when you completely change how night life operates, there’s huge implications for policing. If you can’t surge the number of gardaí on the streets, at least at that start of this change, you’re going to have carnage, especially in Dublin.”

Another source said the pattern of policing would change if a lot of clubs remained open until 6am. This would involve “the day time economy merging into the night time economy”, meaning very little lull in the demands on the Garda in any 24-hour period, especially weekend.

However, others were unsure how many clubs would open until 6am, saying the additional pressure of policing, and where that pressure arose, would only become clear after the changes were introduced.

One source those areas where several clubs availed of the extended opening hours would require a focused and sustained policing presence, with the Public Order Unit on standby for Dublin, as it was during current opening hours. “You would have to do probably until about 7.30am because it takes a while for places to empty and people to get off home. You don’t know how many clubs will open until 6am. But I think it’ll be big during the summer; clubs having 6am opening hours during the months they have loads of tourists in town.”

Other Garda members said the new opening hours may result in clubs closing at staggered times, which would bring an end to large numbers of people pouring out of venues at the same time, which had always proven a significant challenge in towns and cities across the country.