Dublin’s newly-elected City Council has proposed The Dublin City Agreement 2019-2024, a series of commitments to be reviewed twice-yearly that covers city concerns like housing, environmental protection, climate action, transports, arts and culture, accessibility and waste among other things. As part of the proposals for Arts, Heritage and Sport, are two points of relevance to our recent spotlight about Dublin nightlife and the Give Us The Night campaign.

“We aim to develop multi purpose accessible venues to accommodate both day time and night time cultural and creative activities. We will strengthen the cultural and creative provisions and objectives in our local Development Plans.”

“We will protect and enhance our night time culture by appointing a Night Mayor for the City and develop a Dublin Cultural Manifesto.’

The agreement also agrees to ‘deliver 5% cultural, creative community space” within the city.

“We value the diversity, historic and creative nature of Dublin City and believe that Dublin is full of underutilised cultural resources that could be brought into full use to improve the lives of all Dubliners.” says the opening of the agreement.

You can read the full agreement here.

The Dublin Agreement is supported by Fianna Fáil, Green, Labour and Social Democrat City Councillors.

Night Mayors have already been set up across Europe in cities such as Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam and recently London. The role of these mayors is to act as a bridge between club owners and punters to city councils and local residents.

Dublin nightlife has had some major setbacks in the last few years with the closure of many venues across the capital. Properties that were home to clubs such as Hangar and District 8, have been sold so that hotels can be erected in their place. The Bernard Shaw’s popular beer garden has been the latest venue to come under threat after An Bord Pleanála refused owners, Bodytonic to continue operating in the beer garden.

Give Us The Night movement has been putting pressure on the council over the last ten years to tackle these issues. The independent volunteer group is made up of people working within the nightlife industry and aims to improve licensing laws in Ireland and tackle the decline in venues.

We took a look at the declining nightlife in Dublin and what the future holds for us in our Give Us The Night podcast special.

While The Dublin City Agreement attempts to make progress on cultural spaces it fails to mention anything about the improvement of opening hours in Dublin City which has been a major goal for the Give Us The Night movement.