New rules for Dublin buskers

Permits and stricter regulations for street performances in Dublin

Dublin City Council has approved the publication of draft bylaws that will regulate street performances in the capital for the first time.

Under the proposed new bylaws, which require final approval in February, buskers in Dublin would be obliged to buy annual permits and their performances would be subject to time limits.

The permit would cost €30 while performers using amplification would be charged an extra €60. Buskers would not be allowed to stay longer than two hours in any one place and would have to move a minimum of 250m away if they wished to continue performing. In addition they would not be permitted to return to the same place twice in 24 hours. If passed, the council will also ban the use of swords, knives, saws, axes and flames on the city's streets, and anybody caught breaking the busking rules would face a €1,500 fine.

Councillors voted against the proposed ban on busking in Temple Bar, which had caused some controversy among the artistic community which argued that street performance was integral to the city's cultural quarter. However busking will be banned from in front of O'Connell Street's General Post Office (GPO), a building which played a pivotal role in the republic's 1916 Easter Rising.

Busking will be allowed elsewhere in Dublin every day between 09.00 and 23.00, except on Grafton Street where buskers can perform until 01.00 on Saturday and Sunday nights.

The council said the changes were necessary due to a “significant” increase in the number of complaints about street performers from the public and businesses in recent years. In 2012 Dublin buskers signed up to a voluntary code of conduct which they helped to develop in collaboration with the council and local traders. The three-month pilot scheme set out guidlines in relation to issues such as volume and crowd control and initially resulted in fewer complaints before they started to increase once more. voluntary code of conduct