There may be room to expand the Electric Picnic beyond its current capacity of 75,000 people, the festival’s promoter Melvin Benn has said.
Mr Benn said there is clearly demand for more tickets, with this year’s event in Stradbally, Co Laois selling out quickly despite an increase in capacity of 5,000 on the previous year. He ruled out the possibility of the festival ever reaching a capacity of 100,000.
He said he intends to talk to Laois County Council about the possibility of expanding the numbers attending, but is “quite happy with where we are right now”.
“It’s up the council to see if there is more room,” he said, adding that local goodwill towards the event is grounded in co-operation with the community over the last 20 years.
Tickets for next year’s festival go on sale on Wednesday and it will revert to its usual slot of the last weekend in August.
Speaking during a press briefing on Sunday afternoon, Mr Benn said he had spoken to a potential headliner for next year, but that his dream headliners “are probably all dead”.
Many festivalgoers complained on Friday evening about there being nowhere for them to pitch their tents and having to walk for prolonged period to find a space. Mr Benn said it was normal practice for attendees to be directed to overflow camping sites when the designated ones are full.
“You have to contingency plan for camping and we didn’t expect people to arrive as early on Friday as they did,” he said. “The arrival pattern was about two or three hours earlier than it usually is and that meant people got in earlier and people had to go to the next campsite.”
A HSE drugs team on site recovered an MDMA tablet so strong it was capable of causing serious seizures and long-term health damage over the weekend. MDMA is a synthetic psychoactive drug that can come in powder or crystal form. It is the active ingredient in ecstasy pills.
The HSE has a drugs bin on site which allows festival goers to surrender drugs without any consequences and there is a laboratory off the main campus used to analyse the drugs.
Prof Eamon Keenan, HSE national clinical lead for addiction services, said more than 100 samples were likely to be voluntarily surrendered before the end of the festival. Some people were wary about the drugs they had in their possession and wanted to understand how dangerous they are, he said.
One of the tablets that was sent for analysis was found to contain the equivalent of 260mg of MDMA, the strongest pill of its kind recovered on site at Electric Picnic in 10 years.
“It’s more than twice the normal dose,” Prof Keenan said. “It can increase the blood pressure, body temperature and in some cases cause seizures for people. If people are in a very warm environment and they are dancing, it can significant harm to the body.”
