McEntee is working ‘intensively’ on licensing laws after Leo’s rebuke
Taoiseach wants new legislation in place for the summer
JUSTICE Minister Helen McEntee insists she is working ‘intensively’ to get new licensing laws published, following a rebuke from Leo Varadkar.
The Taoiseach cast doubt over whether the reforms would be in place to allow nightclubs to stay open until 6am in time for the summer.
The Sale of Alcohol Bill 2022 proposes to overhaul the country’s licensing laws and permit nightclubs that have been granted a special licence to remain open until 6am, with alcohol not being permitted to be sold past 5am.
The Bill will also regularise pub trading hours, allowing them to open from 10:30am to 12:30am seven days a week. Late bars will keep the existing closing time of 2:30am.
A draft version of the Bill was due to be published at the end of last year but has yet to be delivered.
Speaking in Bucharest last week, the Taoiseach said he does not know if it will be done by the summer.
The Fine Gael leader said: ‘It’s something I’ve been pressing Minister McEntee to make progress on. As Minister McEntee points out, she has many priorities – and more important priorities than opening nightclubs late perhaps – but she is working on it.’ The Taoiseach said he expects the legislation to be published in the next couple of months. ‘Whether it gets through or not is up to the Dáil and Seanad as much as it is up to the Government, but we will have the legislation ready,’ he said. Ms McEntee told the Irish Daily Mail: ‘I am engaging intensively with the Attorney General with a view to publishing legislation within the next few weeks, and thereafter progressing it as quickly as possible.’
It is understood she still intends to have the legislation enacted before the summer recess.
Mr Varadkar said that the change is needed so that Irish cities can have the same kind of nightlife as ‘pretty much every other European country’.
He said: ‘But it’s not going to be a huge number of licences. I wouldn’t like 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.
‘We want to be able to have venues and nightlife 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.’
Mr Varadkar said when it comes to policing it could be beneficial to have venues closing at staggered times rather than ‘everyone emptying out on the streets in a very short window of time’.
Give Us The Night campaigner Sunil Sharpe told the Irish Daily Mail that the delays were turning into a ‘farce’.
He said: ‘We just want to know when these changes will be in place… Given this is a much smaller Bill that initially planned, it shouldn’t take too long.’
Mr Sharpe said that a lot of venues ‘have been hopeful that the laws would have been changed by now’.
He added that the night-time economy was struggling and that it needed more than just licence reform to save it.
If the legislation is enacted, licensing will continue to be granted through the courts, but applications will in future be heard in the district court instead of in the circuit court, with fees dropping significantly as a result.
At present, a premises requires a Special Exemption Order (SEO), which costs €205, for every night that it wants to trade until 2:30am.
However, under the new legislation, late bars and nightclubs will be able to apply for an annual licence, with a onceoff payment instead.
Delays are turning into a ‘farce’