This is quite possibly one of the most bizarre stories we’ve written up for quite some time at Ears To The House – not as odd as discovering a reggae version of “Strings Of Life” was available in Japan, but still weird nonetheless. It concerns Ireland – the twenty six county bit, that is – nightclubs and a curious lack of demand.

At the moment, the Republic of Ireland is trying to update its laws on nightlife. The country, desperate to throw off any remaining sign of the Catholic Church’s previous grip on it, wants to extend nightclub opening hours – letting them remain open all the way until 6am. Currently, they’re limited to 2.30am – something which very few venues actually have licences for.

But the plan has run into a problem – and for once, it might be one that politicians on the Emerald Isle might not have expected. You see, Irish nightclubs might not actually want extended opening hours in the first place. According to Robbie Fox, who previously ran Renards nightclub in Dublin, “There might be room for one or two 6am clubs, but I don’t think there’s room for much more than that.”.

And speaking to The Irish Sun newspaper last year, he said this…

“As an old operator, I can say it costs money to go late into the night, you’ve got to pay your staff, your security staff and there’s no doubt that as the night goes on the business dwindles because if you go out at 8 o’clock you’ve got to be pretty strong to keep going to six in the morning. It’s almost like a funnel that keeps decreasing from 12 until you have the real die-hards at 6 o’clock. The problem then is that they’re not even spending money, they’re jumping around the dancefloor like lunatics. As an operator you’re still paying all your overheads, so in actual fact, going later can be a disadvantage.”

The great liberalisation isn’t going to get very far if those same nightclubs aren’t interested in the first place…