Music industry figures say the sector desperately needs a clear reopening plan. The organisers of Electric Picnic say they are reviewing their options after the festival was refused a licence.
Organisers of the Picnic have said they will directly contact all ticket holders with more information over the next week.
Meanwhile The ‘Give Us the Night‘ campaign has now written to the Taoiseach Micheal Martin saying the industry needs a plan for getting back to normal.
Give Us the Night’s spokesman Sunil Sharpe laid out the groundwork today for how they see it all unfolding:
“It’s a range of measures that we’re looking for the Government to introduce and implement as soon as possible.
“We don’t expect it to be done overnight, but we do expect there to be a plan put in place and then put together starting at the beginning of September.
“There’s many asks: one of them, for instance, would be that we can put trial events on.
“There’s been a lot spoken about pilot events and we haven’t really had any proper pilot events now.
“And also pilot events seem to be, so far, a lot of it seems to be for optics just to fend people from the industry away and hope that the problem will go away.
“But the problem hasn’t gone away: we have to return as an industry and we now need to put on test events with a view to then re-opening the industry at a later date“.
“There’s all sorts of obstacles and challenges that we face… and testing is at the centre of this.
“And it’s really important that we roll-out a bigger testing service.”
“And the Government need to get behind this and need to help the industry return in a serious fashion now, this time.”
Irish venues, nightclubs and music events are being disregarded, and more closures are certain if this continues. We wrote to @MichealMartinTD @LeoVaradkar @cathmartingreen laying out a range of necessary measures to help our industry reopen safely and swiftly. pic.twitter.com/cDstl6fCP1
— Give Us The Night (@GiveUsTheNight) August 5, 2021
