Denis Desmond, the managing director of music promoter MCD, remains hopeful that this year's Electric Picnic festival can still happen, despite Laois County Council refusing to give EP a licence.
However, Mr Desmond insisted that the festival will not be going ahead with any capacity that's less than 70,000 because it's not "a viable proposition to do it for any less."
At present, Electric Picnic is pencilled in from September 24 to 26, seven weeks from now, but its future is looking very uncertain after Laois County Council refused to grant the licence citing public health advice.
In a statement, the local authority said the decision was made "following the most up-to-date public health advice made available to the council from the Health Service Executive."
The council added that "under current Government measures for the management of Covid-19 events of this nature are restricted to an attendance of 500 people only."
The Cathaoirleach of Laois County Council has said the decision was taken "on the basis of public health advice from HSE that was unambiguous."
"This was a very difficult decision for Council to make and I'm sure it will be disappointing to thousands of music fans and the live music industry - however; in the current climate it's the lack of certainty over Covid," Cllr Conor Bergin said.
Speaking on Newstalk Breakfast, Mr Desmond has called on the authorities to provide a more detailed explanation as to why the licence wasn't granted.
"What I'm looking for is an explanation as to why it should not go ahead. As we said in the press release, the recommendation we gave to Laois County Council was that Electric Picnic would only be open to those who were double-vaccinated 14 days prior to the event, which is a system that is an operation in the US with indoor shows since June 26.
"So our recommendation to Laois County Council was that Electric Picnic should go-ahead to those who were fully vaccinated 14 days prior. As Paul Reid said last Friday, we expect to be fully vaccinated by the end of August. Electric is 23-25 September, that's plenty of headroom.
"We obviously need time to build the site, it's a huge event. The infrastructure takes us six weeks to build, hence the urgency for a decision. We're hoping, yes, we're hoping that the government and Laois County Council would at the very least engage with us this week and give us an explanation as to why they feel it should not go ahead."
Later on in the conversation, Desmond said that if a licence was given to the festival but only if it allowed fewer people in attendance, the festival wouldn't take place.
"No, no. We've asked for 70,000 people capacity that is fully vaccinated, it (smaller capacity) doesn't make sense. It's not a viable proposition to do it for any less. It's not like Croke park where they can operate on reduced capacities, our business and financial model are very much based on getting 90-odd per cent sales to achieve breakeven," said Desmond.
He adds: "We're appealing to government because obviously, they run the country. But the decision made for the festival was one that's made by the HSE, that's the information that we got from Laois County Council. So they're acting on guidance or instruction from Nphet and we're asking them to basically engage with us and give us the reason why they've made that decision."
