It's been festival frenzy all summer long, with enough on offer to keep a diverse range of music fans happy. But with high ticket prices and almost too much to choose from, is there a sense of festival fatigue?
Despite reports of disturbances and dissatisfaction among both festival-goers and neighbouring residents, the answer seems to be no. The two major summer festivals marketed at young adults, Oxegen and Electric Picnic, both sold out well in advance, but thanks to online festival message-boards, fans had a forum to air their misgivings after the event.
Oxegen, held at Punchestown racecourse, Co Kildare, on July 8th and 9th, copped the lion's share of complaints this summer.
Oxegen promoters MCD confirmed two weeks ago that gardaí at Naas were investigating an allegation of sexual assault over the festival weekend. There was talk of tents on fire, robberies, unprovoked attacks, aggressive security personnel and even a mini-riot on site.
MCD said in a statement that just 23 tents were set ablaze, and the owners of these tents were mostly responsible. The statement continued that media reports of rioting and looting were untrue.
Responding to queries about aggressive security personnel at Oxegen, Justin Green, spokesman for the company which runs the festival, MCD, asked that either The Irish Times pass on the details of any concert-goers alleging this behaviour or that people contact him directly.
"We take any allegations very seriously, but it's difficult for us to investigate it unless we're contacted. We cannot comment on it until the allegation is investigated."
Lorna Powell (28) from Dublin was at Oxegen (and three other summer music festivals). She says she was impressed by the musical line-up but disappointed by the atmosphere.
"The security was a bit heavy-handed. I saw a guy getting kicked in the back for urinating in public because of the queues for the toilets."
Although she didn't camp on the night when all the reported trouble took place at the campsite, she says her friends relayed stories of tents ablaze. Later she was sent e-mails of clips of tents on fire and other trouble at the festival.
She also thought the event was disorganised. MCD had advertised that there would be attendants on hand to advise people on the layout of the grounds, but she found them difficult to find.
Justin Green says the festival went extremely well and they received only 75 complaints out of the 80,000 people who attended. "That's less than 0.1 per cent, an excellent result by any company's standards, no doubt you will agree," he says.
A few days after Oxegen, MCD pulled the plug on its website's message-board, which was rife with posts from disgruntled fans. This move provoked further anger from fans and pushed them on to other websites, perhaps most notably rival promoters Pod Concerts.
Pod hosted both the Garden Party and the Midlands Music Festival this summer for the first time at Ballinlough Castle, Co Westmeath, and are due to stage Electric Picnic, already sold out, on September 1st to 3rd at Stradbally Hall, Co Laois.
Following the Midlands Music Festival, there were complaints that not all ticket-holders were made aware that the music started three hours earlier on both days of the weekend and some country music fans missed their favourite acts as a result.
Pod Concerts promoter John Reynolds acknowledges that although efforts were made to contact all ticket holders, they all may not have been reached.
While the feedback has been generally positive, he accepts the criticism and promises to make the festival better next year.
"Ireland has a huge appetite for outdoor events," says Reynolds. "I think that people can have a smoke and drink at the same time is a factor."
As well as heavily marketed festivals, there were numerous smaller ones around the country such as Life Festival in Co Offaly, the World Fleadh in Co Kerry, Day of Darkness Metalfest in Co Laois and the Festival of World Cultures in Dún Laoghaire, Dublin, which starts today.
Mark Murphy, a Dublin DJ and promoter, says there has been a huge swell in the number of festivals in the last few years.
"The general public is well catered for this year and could be in danger of over-supply from the promoters," he says. "But this is the first year of a full summer calendar of festivals and we can only judge if there is fatigue and apathy towards them two or three years down the line."
Local authorities where the main events were staged reported satisfaction. Kildare, Westmeath and Laois county councils, in the vicinity of Oxegen, Hi:Fi and last year's Electric Picnic, all say that the promoters cleaned up afterwards.
MCD estimates that more than 24,000 fans travelled from abroad to attend its events.