Mr. Sunil Sharpe:

If these cultural venues need to tick all the same boxes as a normal licensed premises with a seven-day publican's licence, does that not mean they should also have access to the late market through a late permit? I just pose that question. It seems that we have regressed with the theatre licence. That was the leading late-night licence and now it is this cultural amenity licence that does not really support the kinds of cultural activities we have been discussing in recent years in initiatives that are led by the culture departments of this country.

We are hearing much about the back door. If we want to talk about the back door, it could be argued that the pubs were given a back door into the nightclub industry which really hurt the nightclub industry overnight back at the turn of the millennium. That has developed into a really good late bar model that works and Irish people obviously wanted that model. However, it was more than a back door; it was a big open patio double-door into the late-night industry, into the nightclub industry, which really hurt us. When talking about back doors we need to consider the history of this. We had an industry that worked for us and then overnight the pub industry moved into that space so we need a little bit of fair play.

Amendments were made to the theatre licence in 2008. For something that was supposed to be such a big problem, there were only 97 theatre licence holders. While no one knows, I would wager that a number of influential pub owners drove that at the time to get rid of that loophole. I do not believe it was as big a problem as it seemed. More is made of that than should be.