Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said he has been “pressing” Minister for Justice Helen McEntee to progress legislation to allow for later opening hours for bars and nightclubs, but it is unlikely to be enacted by this summer.
Last November, Ms McEntee said new laws extending the opening hours for the country’s nightlife will be published in February with the hope of getting the new laws enacted by summer 2024.
Under the new laws, nightclubs will be permitted to open until 6am and pubs will be permitted to operate until 12.30am
Reforming the system has been discussed for more than 15 years, with plans being brought to Cabinet in October 2022. Ms McEntee last July acknowledged the “frustration” in the delays in implementing the new laws.
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However, speaking to reporters in Bucharest, Romania on Thursday, Mr Varadkar said he doesn’t know if it will be in place by the summer.
“I’d like to see it enacted as soon as possible. I’ve been pressing Ms McEntee to make progress on this legislation. As Ms McEntee points out, she has many priorities and more important priorities than opening night clubs late perhaps, but she is working on it,” he said.
“We expect to be able to publish the Bill certainly in the next couple of months and well before the summer recess. Whether it gets through or not is up to the Dáil and the Seanad as much as it is up to the Government,” he said, but the legislation would be “ready”.
The laws are “not the comprehensive reform” of the licensing legislation they had sought, Mr Varadkar added.
“It’s something more bespoke, more targeted and it is particularly around allowing late licenses for nightclubs and cultural events so that we can have in our cities and towns the kind of nightlife they have in pretty much every other European country but we don’t have in Ireland.”
Last month, Ms McEntee told the Dáil Ireland’s night-time economy was “falling away” with just 70 nightclubs operating across the State at present.
The proposed laws have faced criticism due to the potential impact increasing availability of alcohol could have on the health and wellbeing of the public. However, Mr Varadkar said it is “not going to be a huge number of licenses”.
“I wouldn’t want to create the impression that alcohol will be widely available in every pub, hotel and nightclub until well into the early hours of the morning. That’s not the case,” he said.
“We want to be able to have venues and nightlife, you know like you’d see here in Bucharest or Berlin or London or Barcelona or Lisbon or any other European city that Irish people have experience of and wonder why we can’t have that in our country.”
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