Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. I appreciate her time here, given the six portfolios she has to her name. I was delighted to see Tourism Ireland invite over the directly elected mayors of greater Manchester and Liverpool city. It is great to see the link-up between Ireland and those cities so close to us. It is welcome that the night-time economy was a feature of those discussions. I know that Sacha Lord, the night-time economy advisor for greater Manchester, was here, invited by Tourism Ireland, and was part of a delegation on the night-time economy. I appreciate the reports at the weekend but I will await announcements by the Ministers involved on what exactly the new licensing reform or regime will look like.

Nightclubs deserve their own licence. We need to recognise nightclubs as culture and entertainment. They should not be locked into a pub licensing system as an add-on. If that is the case, nightclubs will be forced into a pub licensing system that is crippling financially and no one will open any new nightclubs. There were 522 nightclubs in 2000, and now there are 85. There are no big-room clubs in this city for 1,000 people or 1,200 people. The kinds of events in Manchester to which people, including me and friends of mine, travel are those held near Manchester Piccadilly station or those held by the Warehouse Project. In this city we had Tripod, at the top of Harcourt Street, which could hold 2,000 people. It is now gone, replaced with vacant lots. If we hold a mirror up to Dublin, are we attracting enough footfall at night? Are enough people travelling for weekend trips for gigs, concerts and festivals? Are we using our spaces into the night? The city is stripped of venues. Insurance costs are hurting businesses, and licensing laws, as most people now accept, are archaic. It is not an easy business environment in which to survive. I think that is why people my age, for example, rather than creating events and festivals, are opening venues and cafés instead.

I have some statistics as to how cities depend on the quality of their nightlife as part of their visitor attraction. The inbound spend in Dublin in 2016 was €9.2 billion. Nightclubs identified 4,500 full-time equivalent jobs nationwide. The music industry, which is built on live performance and the availability of venues and audiences, contributes €703 million to the economy. The wider arts sector, so much of which is experienced at night, had a gross value added of €1.5 billion in 2010.

The Minister has played her part in this area, particularly with a step change in respect of Government policy, but I want to see the Government take on a more active role in securing spaces in this city. We need a large flagship venue for club nights or gigs and music venues. I am talking about a venue with a capacity of 2,000 or 3,000. There must be loads of spaces in this city not being used. The Minister has an input when she talks to businesses at events in places like the Digital Hub and Guinness.What about the National Concert Hall and the capital plan for contemporary gigs, conferences and club nights there? There is a shortage of these venues, and the State should step in. The Minister's input in identifying and securing spaces would be considerable and transformative.

Has the Minister considered new theatre licences? Has she spoken to the Minister for Justice, Deputy McEntee, about them? Can we return to the old position on theatre licences? There were fewer than 100 theatre licences at the time the arrangement was changed. The number is minimal by comparison with the 11,000 alcohol licences in this country. Could we examine the licensing regime again? With regard to a specific nightclub licence, the uptake will not be huge. Importantly, however, a specific nightclub licence has the potential to be fit for purpose and workable. It would remove the barriers to entry that exist in terms of the pub licence.