Let's get the party started

It’d be funny if what was happening in the economic sphere wasn’t so fucking catastrophic for so many. Two years ago, all that everyone in Dublin seemed to want to talk about was the price of property. Now, as the price of houses collapses, in a total reversal, you can’t stop and chat to an old buddy in the street without the conversation turning to the recession and the fact that our politicians led us right into the bear pit.

Well, it doesn’t matter what your political perspective might be, the primary objective in the current crisis has to be to save jobs. We can also shake on the idea that, if we want to achieve that, generating as much trade that involves a transfer of funds from elsewhere in Europe, the US or the world to Ireland has to be good for the country and the people.
As far as business goes, that’s the battle ground. Now, let’s think short-term for a minute. Is there any area of economic activity wherein it might be possible to get a really good result this year? Of course, individual Irish companies going out and selling their expertise and their services and their products more effectively on the global market will be crucial in the longer run. But I’m talking here about the immediate future. 
The obvious answer is tourism. With about 8 million visitors last year, estimates are that the annual value of tourism to the Irish economy is in the region of €4.6 billion. Those figures might fall this year, and if they do it will surely put another nail in the coffin of an already beleaguered service industry. On the other hand, if we could achieve a 10% or a 20% increase, the benefits to the economy would be immense. I haven’t looked in detail at the figures, but I suspect that between excise duty (on drink and cigarettes), VAT and PAYE, well over 50% of every tourism euro goes into the exchequer. 
So let’s start by getting a fix on why it is difficult to imagine us doing the business in 2009. Over the past ten years the Government has been engaged in a series of policies designed to make Irish cities like Dublin, Cork, Galway and Limerick far less attractive as tourist destinations, especially for anyone under the age of 35 or 40. In innumerable different ways they have attacked live music, entertainment, clubs and nightlife. There is no intelligent justification for it, but the simple fact is that they allowed themselves to be bullied by a bunch of snobs and anti-alcohol campaigners, who took advantage of a couple of very unfortunate, tragic events to mount a deeply conservative campaign against the idea of people having fun, staying out late and enjoying themselves.
I was talking to a friend from Morocco at the weekend. He has lived in Brussels and Amsterdam and visited all of the major European cities. In his early twenties, he is married to an Irish woman and has been based here now for over a year. Totally spontaneously and without the slightest prompting, he launched into an analysis of what’s wrong with nightlife in Dublin, as if I had written the script myself.
“Why does everywhere close at the same time?” he asked. “It’s crazy. If you go out on Friday or Saturday night, suddenly at 2.30, everyone pours out into the street. No one can get a taxi. Everyone has been drinking. Of course you are going to get arguments and fights!”
He made the observation that people start drinking earlier in Dublin than almost anywhere on the continent. That there is far less movement between restaurants, bars and clubs here than there is in Europe. That there is a greater level of competitiveness about getting hold of a drink. That rigid universal closing times encourage people to stock up. That drink is then rushed. That people get drunk as much because of how quickly they are drinking as the volume.  
All of this is true.
He pointed out that movement between different clubs is a good thing. People get a rest from drinking; they get fresh air; they get exercise walking; or they give extra business to taxis if the trip from A to B or C is long enough. But in Ireland, people go to a bar or a club and they stay there – because there is only so much time before the doors are closed and the house lights go up.
“In every other city you can stay out till 4, 5 or 6 am,” he said, “and it works. It’s much better. Let people close when they want to close. What’s the problem?”
Being a muslim, my friend doesn’t drink alcohol, so he is not proselytising on behalf of some culture of hedonistic excess. He is thinking about three things: what is best for the people; what is best for business; and what is best for tourism. He is also thinking about how to minimise the level of violence and aggression. And finally – for the purposes of today’s debate! – he is thinking about what is best for taxi drivers, for the Gardaí and for hospitals, all of whom are in the frontline when things go seriously wrong on the streets at night.
“It’s much better for taxis. There are too many taxis in Dublin, they are clogging up the streets with nothing to do for most of the night. And yet after 2.30 on a Friday or a Saturday night, you just can’t get a taxi. Unbelievable! Whereas if closing times were staggered, or people could just leave to go home when they want to, there would naturally be a more even flow all the time.”
Right again.
It is typical of the trends in public policy in Ireland over the past decade that people are increasingly being treated like adolescents by the authorities (when in fact it is the authorities who are behaving like adolescents!). The implied message is that Irish people are too stupid and immature to be allowed stay out as late as their European counterparts. But of course the effect of this is that many young Europeans or British (against whom there had been an increasingly snobbish sniffiness – “We don’t want their hen parties!”) do not want to come to a country that treats its citizens in such a juvenile and condescending way. And would you blame them?
As a result, the potential of our tourist trade has been unnecessarily undermined. In addition, the punitive charges that are levied on bars and clubs for late opening are an extremely (one suspects deliberately) blunt instrument. They don’t distinguish between a superclub and a small bar – in effect discriminating in favour of the larger drinking or dancing dens, with the result that a lot of smaller places are closing down or going to the wall. It is happening every week now. 
Which makes Dublin and Cork and the rest even less attractive to tourists: where, they ask, are the great clubs? Where are the all nighters? Where’s the fun after midnight? Where’s the legendary craic? It’s with O’Leary in the grave. And I don’t mean Michael.
Well, it’s time for a sea change. We should introduce a proper licensing system, at reasonable cost to the venues that allows for staggered closing times. We should open up the entertainment scene, to give restaurants, bars and clubs half a chance of surviving. We should get active, promoting Ireland as a music, culture and food destination for anyone who will come. We should promote it as a festival island. We should beg gays to come ("Blow jobs for everyone"). We should turn it into a youth friendly place. We should introduce fresh incentives to have movies made here. We should make Dublin famous as a party town.
How many visitors can we attract to see U2 at Croke Park, and at what benefit to the exchequer? How many fans might come for Bruce Springsteen, who has selected Dublin as a place to play ahead of many other major European cities? How many for Oxegen? For Electric Picnic? Can we get the international media to showcase Ireland at its best, with the music playing and the crowds dancing? We need to set targets.
On St. Patrick’s Day, Glen Hansard will appear with Marketa Irglova on The Simpsons. It is a measure of the level of success achieved by one of the country’s greatest rock songwriters and performers of the past twenty years that he has been honoured with a Simpsons' appearance. Dublin features in the episode, largely in response to the story told in John Carney’s Once, and the impact of the wonderful ‘Falling Slowly’.
And yet there is not the slightest suggestion at this stage that anyone in government over the past ten or fifteen years ever really appreciated what this sort of thing might mean to the country. They had no feel for music. They had no feel for youth culture. And so almost all of the decisions they made in relation to all of this were based on an arid form of paternalism and were deeply misguided and wrong.
Let’s just say that you can only start to reverse it now. It is one of the few areas where even the possibility of an uplift exists in the short term. Let’s use our heads. Let’s do the right thing for a change...