Rewriting Dublin’s nightlife – is Ray O’Donoghue the man to give us the night?

Ray O’Donoghue, who was appointed as Dublin City Council’s night-time economy advisor in April 2024, is no stranger to the entertainment industry.

He is the former director of the Sea Sessions, the well-known music, sea and surfing festival that takes place each summer in Bundoran, County Donegal.

That experience will help as he embarks on this new role, he said by phone last October.

A major part of that role, he says, is “rewriting the narrative” of Dublin’s nightlife with greater positivity.

Last October, Dublin City Council launched a new strategy to revitalise the city’s nightlife. It has three main pillars: safety, transport and mobility, and cultural activity.

A night-time economy steering and advisory group was to oversee the rollout of such efforts. O’Donoghue spoke cautiously about the speed of change.

“It’s not going to happen overnight and there’s no silver bullet,” he said. “There will be, there will be change and I’m excited about it and let’s speak again in the year’s time and we can see where we’re at.”

And while O’Donoghue is embedded within Dublin City Council, there are limits to the council’s powers over community safety, transport, and the city’s cultural events. Indeed his role, he says, is “all about coordination”.

Since this October interview, O’Donoghue’s influence has been apparent. The Safe & Sound’ Campaign, New Year’s Festival Dublin Music Trail and Brigit Late were all efforts that signalled the impact of his role and efforts taken to expand the agenda of Dublin’s nightlife.

Within the pillars

Sunil Sharpe, a member of  Give us the Night – a voluntary group that advocates for the night-time industry and for the creation of this role – said that their campaign was “fully supportive” of O’Donoghue.

That O’Donoghue comes from a nightlife and festival background is a major benefit, said Sharpe. “Dublin City at night, you can argue, is like one large festival every weekend. Having that operational experience is a big plus.”

Some of the initiatives that O’Donoghue talks about, when it comes to transport, fall outside of the council’s direct control. But O’Donoghue can help steer priorities, he says.

He praises the implementation of security guards on Dublin Bus services, which were introduced on a trial basis last October, and mentions plans for potential “safe waiting zones” for public transport.

Since the November general election, the new Justice Minister, Fianna Fáil’s Jim O’Callaghan, has said he’s working on new legislation to bring in a dedicated public transport police with powers of arrest.

O’Donoghue also talks about engaging with the National Transport Authority (NTA) to increase public-transport services during night-time rush hour.

O’Donoghue says his responsibilities also include creating awareness about active travel – walking and cycling – to get people into the city.

Sharpe, from Give Us the Night, says that transport and safety are “intrinsically linked”.

Twenty-four-hour public transport services should be expanded to the majority of areas in Dublin, he said.

In January, the NTA announced two new 24-hour bus routes, along the E spine, running between Ballymun and Dún Laoghaire, through the city centre.

The council’s strategy for revitalising the night-time economy notes, under its safety pillar, support for HSE-led harm-reduction practices.

When asked whether this is in reference to monitored and safe drug use, O’Donoghue implied that this would not be a feature.

However, the HSE has been working on drug harm-reduction initiatives. Such as its Safer Nightlife Harm Reduction Programme, at four festivals in 2024, including Electric Picnic, which included “‘back of house’ drug checking”.

O’Donoghue praised the success of this initiative and discussed the potential for other new safety measures, such as enhancing both lighting and CCTV surveillance capacity.

Affordability

A Your Dublin Your Voice survey carried out in 2023, found that affordability was the main barrier faced by people looking to enjoy a night out in Dublin.

When asked about this, O’Donoghue said that as night mayor his responsibility is to promote and raise awareness about the different options available.

It’s not all about €10 pints, he said, citing his own experience at the Hugh Lane Gallery’s Late Night Thursdays, which offered free admission.

Locally sourced alcoholic drinks and non-alcoholic options could offer a solution to extortionate drink prices, said Sharpe, from Give Us the Night.

He argues that some companies have “treated the licensed trade appallingly with continual price hikes, and by extension the public too”.

The Changing Times brewery serves as an example of a business that produces locally crafted alcoholic beverages, with investors including Dublin favourites The Long Hall and Arthur Maynes.

Better public transport would also help reduce the cost of going out, said Sharpe, so people wouldn’t have to fork out for taxis.

But ticket prices are a global issue, he said, as going out has become “a lot more act-driven than venue-driven”.

“I would like to see ticket and door prices come down, or at least for some venues to be able to do cheaper admission more often,” he said.

“The government could aid this through a range of measures, not least licensing reform, but venue bookers could also drive harder bargains with acts to bring fees down,” Sharpe continues.

Politicians have been deliberating on the issue of licensing reform and whether to extend the opening hours of pubs and nightclubs since at least 2022, when the Department of Justice introduced a plan for that.

O’Donoghue, the night mayor, says that while it’s not his place to advocate for the late-night licence, and this responsibility lies with the Department of Justice, he does believe that a choice should be there.

Bringing them in would reflect the change in Ireland’s binge-drinking culture, he says.

Most of the political parties have said they are for reform, says Sharpe. And, “there is now a licensing bill ready to be published”.

Listed within the programme for the new government, there is a promise to “enact legislation to update our licensing laws, promoting the development of a modern and diverse night-time economy, which is reflective of local needs”.

But Sharpe, of Give Us the Night, is cautious. “It’s hard to know how committed this new government will be to improving the night-time economy, especially post-midnight,” he says.

“There is something that feels quite ominous about Fianna Fáil taking over the justice portfolio too, given the destructive changes they made to licensing legislation in the past,” he said.

However, Sharpe continues to maintain a sense of optimism and signals his support for plans for transport police.

“That said, Jim O’Callaghan does have a better idea of what nightlife is and can be. The plans for dedicated transport police is also something we support, which we proposed to the last government,” he said.

Soft power

O’Donoghue’s role, overseen by Dublin City Council, begs the question of how much influence local authorities can have on nightlife economies.

“The influence that local authorities have in Ireland is still limited in that they don’t oversee transport, policing or licensing,” says Sharpe.

“Quite often there’s an adversarial relationship between venues and the council too, based on the likes of excessive rates costs for venues, or noise related issues,” he says.

Still, the appointment of O’Donoghue suggests that the council is looking to play a greater role in shaping nightlife, says Sharpe.

And Dublin was just one of nine cities and towns across the country that the former Minister for Culture, Catherine Martin, then a Green Party TD, announced in 2022 would get night-time economy advisors, as part of a pilot.

The implementation of this role in nine local authorities is a good sign, says Sharpe, of Give Us the Night.

But “In time we need to see bigger dedicated teams and for local authorities to see more opportunity in the night rather than their default position of seeing it only as danger,” he said.

Out and about

Hamen Hashemi was out in the hustle and bustle of the Grafton Street area last Saturday night.

His main concern? The failure to implement late-night licensing. “That option is widely available all over the world, just not in Ireland,” he says.

He says this has an impact on safety on the streets late at night in Dublin. “Because alcohol does take a few minutes to kick in and by the time you know they cleared out the pub and it’s after kicking in, they’re just mangled,” he says.

Hashemi points to seeing people “sculling pints back” once the last-order bell rings instead of being able to come and go as they please until 6am, like in some other countries.

While Hashemi says he doesn’t feel unsafe on a night out, he does point to the risk of public-safety incidents like fights that can occur as people flood the streets all at once, at the end of the night.

O’Donoghue has suggested “safety zones” as one way to deal with on-street unruliness.

It’s an area for people who, ‘[if you] have drank too much, if your friend’s in trouble, if you know, you’ve broken your finger, whatever it might be, you go. There’s a medic there. There’s a couple of security, some welfare,” he says.

Essentially, a first point of contact for those who find they need help, he says.

There was a “pilot welfare area” on Foster Place, off College Green, in the lead-up to Christmas. O’Donoghue said he would like to see safety zones set up regularly.

Evolving drinking culture has meant nightlife is calmer these days than 20 years back, says Sharpe. “Even though there can be very big groups of people out at once, in my experience the volatility levels have dropped significantly,” he says.

It could be improved still though, says Sharpe. “I think more Garda vehicles parked in strategic positions would be useful, for instance,” he says. “People who commit street crime, especially assaults, need to feel that it’s not so easy to get away with it.”

O’Donoghue said he didn’t want to discuss the clash between Gardaí and revellers at Tola Vintage’s block party in Temple Bar on Culture Night in September.

He has also steered away from a conversation around on-street food services at night, or “soup runs”, saying in an interview with Newstalk last November that he was there to talk about the positive happenings in the city and his role is concentrated on getting more people out in Dublin.

But both discussions are key to how inclusive Dublin is at night, and how to ensure that a response to calls for feelings of greater safety in the city centre doesn’t result in streets that are socially cleansed.