Ms Ciara O'Connell:

Having been asked to present, and not wanting to speak from my own experience in isolation, I reached out to select colleagues in the arts and entertainment industry to get some of their thoughts and ideas on the current state of Irish nightlife. As a business owner, I am entrenched in making my business work and until recently did not have the time to stop and look beyond my own patch to see how our nighttime culture is doing. Dishearteningly, it appears the answer is "not well". Those to whom I spoke reported finding it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to do business, with many talking exit strategies. I strongly feel, however, that all is far from lost and that with the right supports we can turn this around. We are faced not with a crisis but with an opportunity to capitalise on what we have, bring real Irish culture to the fore and allow a nighttime economy that can be among the best in the world to flourish. Ireland is a unique mix of cosmopolitan and traditional. Our people are well travelled, multicultural, broad-minded and always welcoming of new experiences. Our nightlife should and could reflect this, provided it is given the opportunity to grow and thrive.

I am representing my company, Central Arts, and my city, Waterford. I feel in some sense that I am representing our smaller regional cities and towns as well. There is a commonly held belief that Dublin nightlife culture is not doing well. While this may be true, the committee should know that this is happening all over Ireland and we have all been feeling it for a long time. In 2014, during the darkest days of the recession, austerity and job losses, my partner and I decided to reinvest our savings and some redundancy money in an alternative venue that offered something different but something for everyone - an alternative nighttime space. I come from a social work background and my partner is a theatre producer and artist. With our eclectic mix of skills we decided to give it a go. So Central Arts was born. Our venue is small but perfect for what we do. Our ambitions are modest and our expectations scaled. We have only 50 seats and are far from a commercial venture; we are somewhere between a small family business and a social enterprise. It is safe to say that without the support of our local council we would not be where we are today. We are a venue - a black box theatre - and an arts company. At the heart of what we do is breaking down the inherent exclusivity of the arts and making the arts and culture accessible to everyone. We strongly believe in inclusivity, opening up the general understanding of what culture is and creating a space for contemporary and traditional entertainment offerings.

As our company has grown, so has our remit: it now includes festivals, workshops and mentoring programmes that help young people find their way into careers in the arts and events and performance areas. We are a home and performance space for artists, musicians and theatre makers, and our own productions have toured nationally and internationally. This broad remit has meant we have an offering for all our community. Thousands have crossed our threshold over the past five years to perform, engage in and enjoy a diverse offering of modern and traditional Irish culture.

Sadly, however, after five years hard work to make this idea a success, we now find that the space in which we exist is being squeezed and that the freedom to provide an alternative to mainstream, alcohol-based nightlife culture is becoming increasingly elusive. This August we were informed by the Garda that to continue our electronic music offering we would have to apply to the courts for a public dance licence or to cease these nights immediately. We were subsequently told by our insurers that to afford the necessary insurance cover to hold such a licence, we would need to have turnover well in excess of €1 million, which is clearly out of the reach of a small, 50-seat arts venue. We never wished to serve alcohol in our premises or to have alcohol central to our model but are now being forced to do so to be able to continue providing a programme of entertainment at nighttime. We must now become a licensed venue to continue existing.

Central Arts has a business model that is unique and has proved successful; however, as an alternative venue there is no protection or support for us. Grassroots music and arts venues are becoming a thing of the past. We were born of the recession and wanted to make something happen in our city when there was so little. Now, with the green shoots of recovery growing around us, we wonder whether there is any room left for us to exist. Where and how will young people get their start in the entertainment and nighttime industries if there is no infrastructure to support them? I feel that our idea of Irish culture is narrowing. We need to re-examine it to include contemporary art forms, new cultures and alternative ideas and forms of performance. Not only that, but we need to allow these to flourish as part of a nighttime culture that allows opportunity for every alternative. We have been unable to access any funding or support at a national level. There is a commonly held belief in regional Ireland that arts and culture funding does not trickle down past the capital.

What can be done to encourage alternative nightlife, and nightlife as a whole? As the Give Us the Night campaign has stated, the legislation that dictates our nighttime economy, certainly the application process, is outdated and needs to be re-examined and overhauled, with allowance made for venues outside the mainstream licensing system. We need to look to Europe to bring our nighttime offerings into line with its more successful examples and we cannot do this while constrained by the current licensing system. As we have found in Waterford, the Garda has a lot of power to dictate the nighttime economy, which has resulted in a national inequality in respect of closing times. Likewise, the insurance industry and the claims culture are having a huge effect on nightlife, with runaway premiums single-handedly pushing small independent venues and festivals out of business. There needs to be more support for grassroots organisations, those who provide diverse offerings, and smaller venues such as ours that may never turn over €1 million in a year.