A licence application for a Stringfellows lap-dancing club has been adjourned in Dublin. Residents of Dublin inner city are opposed to the club proposed by Peter Stringfellow in Parnell Street.
The British businessman has encountered fierce opposition from locals who believe it will bring down the image and safety of the area.
The North Inner City Residents Group said they did not want the club in an area which had a girl's secondary school, a toy shop, a cinema and corporation flats for young children.
"The residents are not only appalled but we are fearful of how this proposed establishment will affect the area, which is residential and has lots of children," said spokeswoman Maria Mhic Mheanmain.
At the Richmond District Court, Judge Mary Collins heard from Mr Stringfellow's lawyer that there were a number of licensing issues to deal with and that the hearing would last for up to two hours.
She adjourned the case for mention until January 4th.
Mr Stringfellow is looking for a dance licence for the club, which will be spread across three floors and will be far larger than the five existing lapdancing clubs already operating in Dublin.
Mrs Mhic Mheanmain spoke outside the court with three generations of her family, her grandmother Maire, her husband Manus and her four-and-a-half-month-old daughter.
She said the north inner city area around Parnell Street had been very disenfranchised in the past with high unemployment and a major drugs problem. "But since that, there has been huge regeneration of the area and it really is an up-and-coming area. I feel, particularly from international evidence, that the establishment of a lapdancing club will only serve to bring the area down even further."
Mr Stringfellow has insisted that his lapdancing club will gentrify the area and has said that residents should accept his international reputation.
"I think it was an outrageously classist, elitist and downright snobbish statement to make and I think Peter Stringfellow knows full well it will bring down the area and I think it's very interesting that he chose a working class area, as opposed to (somewhere else like) Foxrock, to have his establishment," said Mrs Mhic Mheanmain.
The residents' campaign is being supported by Ruhama, a group which works with the victims of prostitution.
Spokeswoman Geraldine Rowley, who was present in court, said she was concerned that Stringfellow's club would act as a breeding ground for prostitution and sex trafficking.
"We still have our concerns as a project that works with women who are exploited. We have concerns at the proliferation of lapdancing clubs in Ireland, and such a big premises as Stringfellows that would be opening not alone in a residential area but that it would be promoting the commodification of women's bodies and the selling of women's bodies as entertainment," she said.
Ms Rowley said her group had evidence that non-national women were being trafficked into Ireland to work in the sex trade and had dealt with more than 70 in the last year.
Local Labour Party councillor Emer Costello said she and her colleagues on Dublin's City Council were totally opposed to the club. "It is not something we want to see coming into Parnell Street, with the kind of regeneration we have," she said. She added that she understood the gardai would also be objecting to the club's licence application at the next hearing of the case.