Busking code of practice update
- Thu 10 January, 2013
In December Dublin City BID met representatives from Store Street Gardaí, and the various relevant departments from Dublin City Council to review the recently completed trial period of the Street Performers Code of Practice.
It was agreed that regulation through bye-laws was necessary and that the Code of Practice, although well-intentioned had not been successful. 185 performers signed up to the code there were 15-20 problematic performers who were the cause of regular problems. This would be in with reports received by Dublin City BID from our members.
The Code of Practice period saw no drop in the rate of calls that BID were reporting to Gardaí and DCC regarding loud and problematic busking. Last year BID made 724 complaints, in the 3 months of the code practice trial we reported 190 incidents. Dublin City BID has been reporting problematic busking since its inception and have been lobbying consistently over this time for the introduction of bye-laws to regulate busking and street performance.
A Dublin City Council report is to go to a Special Policy Committee later this month, at this meeting they will recommend that adoption of bye-laws, they have received submissions from the Gardaí calling for this as well as from individual BID members, at present the Garda powers in this area are limited and need to be strengthened. Dublin City BID has also made a detailed submission. It was also noted that the vast majority of the performers favour regulation as they see no other mechanism to deal with disruptive performers who ruin things for others.
DCC must also discuss any new bye-laws with their law agent to make sure that they are not duplicating any existing legislation, this was not thought to be likely as Galway have recently brought in a busking bye-law and noise pollution advised that there is nothing in place at the moment to deal with someone performing in a public space.
For new bye-laws to be adopted a motion will have to be put forward to the City Councillors, who will then vote for or against the adoption of bye-laws. We would encourage any businesses affected by loud or problematic busking to lobby their local councillors about the issue. Contact details for City Councillors are available here: