They say that they "remain in government hands"

If you're missing festivals and were holding out hope that this year's Electric Picnic would go ahead in September, you may have gotten very excited by reports appearing in Irish media yesterday.

A story on the Irish Times website early yesterday afternoon claimed that Ireland's biggest music festival was planning to return on the first weekend of September, citing Brian McDermott - who runs event management company Fuel and the Kaleidoscope festival in Wicklow - as saying that "you would not be fully insane to say that it should go ahead."

Melvin Benn, the Managing Director of Festival Republic - the company that owns and runs Electric Picnic - had said as far back as September 2020 that the 2021 edition was planning to go ahead, and yesterday's Irish Times story seemed to confirm that.

However, the festival rushed to clarify the statement on Twitter yesterday, saying that McDermott, the person quoted in the article, was "not one of the organisers" and that they had "asked for the article to be taken down."

"The Electric Picnic team remain hopeful that the vaccination roll out will be complete in sufficient time to allow the festival to go ahead obviously," it continued, "but remain in Government hands for that."

The vaccination programme is due to be completed by September, according to the Irish government.

The line-up for Electric Picnic is usually announced in late March. Planning permission for the event licence from last year has been rolled over to 2021, and 95% of ticket holders have kept their tickets from 2020.

If it does go ahead, the line-up for this year's Electric Picnic will not roll over from 2020, however. The week before it is due to take place, the likes of Stormzy, Liam Gallagher and Post Malone will play the Reading and Leeds festivals in the UK.

The UK government plans to ease restrictions following the completion of their vaccination programme in June.