A retired Circuit Court judge has described night-clubs as "places of evil" and called for their closure as a means of rooting out crime in the community.
Mr A.G. Murphy, who retired last year, said that during his 16 years on the bench he had failed to return the streets of the city of Cork to the same condition he remembered as a young man.
Instead, it had become unsafe to go out at night and walk the streets.
Addressing a seminar on crime in the city, Mr Murphy said he believed too much evil had resulted from night-clubs, and it should no longer be tolerated.
Crimes of violence had become drink- or drug-related and perfectly ordinary respectable people with no criminal record who went from pubs to night-clubs for extended drinking hours were capable, after becoming "twisted", of bottling somebody in the face.
Night-clubs should be shut down, the retired judge said, because they were places where evil congregated.
"People are in a situation where drink and drugs are not far from the surface. The majority of evil congregates in clubs. Close them down."
Gardaí in Cork say that while clubs generally provide an acceptable social outlet, some of them are not well run, condone excessive drinking and fail to use CCTV properly.
Mr Pat Delaney of the Small Firms Association told the seminar that crime against business had risen by 10 per cent and that 45 per cent of businesses had been victims of crime at least once in the past year.
With the average cost to business of each incident estimated at €2,769, the annual bill had now reached €230 million.
When the cost of increased security measures, including the cost of operating hidden cameras etc was taken into account, the bill amounted to €984 million, Mr Delaney added.