It “makes no sense” that 70,000 people will be able to go to the Electric Picnic festival when first holy communions and confirmations are still banned, a councillor has said.
The prospect of Ireland’s largest arts and music festival being held on September 24-26 was “scandalous” when the ploughing championship and religious celebrations could still not take place, said Aisling Moran, a Laois county councillor.
“They could have tried to reduce the attendance to 10,000 or live-streamed some of it, but they don’t seem to care,” Moran told The Times. “I am an avid festivalgoer but that just isn’t safe.”
Moran, the Fine Gael member for Graiguecullen-Portarlington, said residents in Stradbally, Co Laois, were nervous about the festival going ahead. “There have been about 20 Covid deaths, the community is scared of this festival happening — especially because people will be travelling from all over Ireland and from abroad,” she said.
Moran spoke out after Melvin Benn, the managing director of Festival Republic, the Electric Picnic organiser, told RTE radio’s News at One that he was confident the festival would happen. He said no one in government had told him otherwise.
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Pandemic rules limit attendance numbers at most organised outdoor events to 500 at venues that can usually take 5,000. While several test events have been staged, Ireland’s entertainment sector remains effectively closed.
This year’s All Together Now, which had been due to take place in Co Waterford in August, was cancelled by organisers. The Longitude Festival and Forbidden Fruit event, both in Dublin, were postponed.
Festival Republic hopes that Electric Picnic can go ahead, with admission restricted to people who hold a Covid certificate. These are available to anyone who has been double-jabbed or who has recovered from Covid.
“I’m investing . . . in the effort to try and make sure that the Picnic can happen by presuming that we are going ahead,” Benn said. “I say ‘presuming’ that we are going ahead, because let’s be 100 per cent clear here, nobody’s told me I can’t go ahead.”
The promoters and organisers wrote to members of the government last week outlining proposals for Covid safety measures.
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A decision by Laois county council on a licensing application for Electric Picnic is expected imminently.
Last week the council unanimously called on the National Public Health Emergency Team to urgently issue guidance about festivals. Paschal McEvoy, a Fianna Fail councillor for Louth, who tabled the motion, was unsurprised that the organisers were so vocal about their hopes for the festival.
“It absolutely can’t and won’t go ahead, that’s what I say,” he said. “There is no justification for it to go ahead or for it to get a licence for this September. How can attendance go from the 5,000 allowed to the 70,000 they are hoping for? It is not fair and it is not safe.”
Leo Varadkar, the tanaiste, said last month that proof of vaccination or Covid-19 recovery could be used, in conjunction with testing, to help live music resume.
Meanwhile Elizabeth Ryan, a lecturer in immunology at the University of Limerick, said healthy people might not require an annual Covid-19 booster but people with weaker immune systems would need them. “The medicines agencies will keep an eye on how long the efficacies will last,” she said.
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Ryan said booster vaccines would be a “weapon in our armoury” and it was possible that new Covid vaccines would be developed by the end of the year.
Last week, the National Immunisation Advisory Committee recommended the use of booster shots for vulnerable groups first.
