Preparation for the Electric Picnic festival is underway with the event scheduled to take place as usual in the first weekend in September, the organisers have said.
As The Irish Times reports, planning permission for the 70,000 capacity festival in Stradbally, Co Laois has been rolled over from last year and 95 per cent of those who bought tickets for last year’s cancelled event have retained their tickets for this year.
Brian McDermott, one of the organisers of Electric Picnic, said the festival will go ahead “unless the Government tells us otherwise” and it should be followed by the National Ploughing Championships later in the month of September.
Mr McDermott added that there are “strong reasons for optimism” that the population will be sufficiently vaccinated to allow Electric Picnic to take place.
“Given the conditions we are looking at in terms of vaccines, you would not be fully insane to say that it should go ahead,” he said.
“The only thing that will stop it going ahead as far as I can is what could be perceived as an overtly cautious approach by the Government.”
Planning permissions
Mr McDermott operates the event management company Fuel which runs the Kaleidoscope festival in Russborough House.
That festival is scheduled to run between June 25th and 27th, but he admits that it is unlikely to go ahead given the pace of the vaccination rollout.
On Wednesday Mr McDermott will host an online event. The speakers will include Electric Picnic promoter Melvin Benn who is expected to state that he intends to go ahead with the festival.
Mr Benn has already announced that the Reading and Leeds festivals will go ahead in the UK on the weekend of Friday, August 27th to Sunday, August 29th, the weekend before Electric Picnic is due to take place (September 3rd to 5th).
Stormzy, Post Malone and Liam Gallagher are the headline acts announced for Reading and Leeds.
Mr McDermott said the requisite planning permissions are already in place and that it is not late for a festival the size of Electric Picnic to be organised now.
