I'm also having issues with the IRC... Clicking the link on the header menu does nothing but spin its wheels before finally saying it won't load after about 3-5minutes. I use a client IRC also but it's a RC, I've been having some problems with it as well so I don't wanna put a lot of weight on it not working.
But none the less, I am using IceChat 9 RC5.0, and it will not let me connect to the normal irc server or irc2
*Edit: This is what my IRC Client is saying:
[02:49.36] -irc.furtopia.org- *** Attempting to connect to irc.furtopia.org (xx.xxx.xx.xxx) on port 6007
[02:49.57] Socket Exception Error: 10060:A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a-
period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond xx.xxx.xx.xxx:6007