KEITH DUFFY HAS said he loves Ireland but that Boyzone weren’t offered an Irish stadium for their upcoming reunion.

The band first broke up in 2000, as their members decided to pursue solo careers, before reuniting in 2007.

Boyzone then performed their Thank You And Goodnight farewell tour between 2018 and 2019, finishing with a five-night stint in the London Palladium.

This summer, on 5 and 6 June, Boyzone will mark their “final chapter” with two gigs in London’s Emirates Stadium, the home of Arsenal.

Duffy and former Westlife member Brian McFadden today appeared on The Morning Show with Kathryn Thomas on Dublin’s Q102.

Duffy and McFadden are now part of the group Boyzlife.

Host Kathryn Thomas said listeners weren’t happy there isn’t a Dublin date for the Boyzone reunion and Duffy remarked: “The reality and the honesty behind it is it was the promoter that offered us the stadium in the UK, we weren’t offered a stadium in Ireland.”

He added: “I love Ireland, I’m a very passionate and proud Irish man.

“Boyzone never got to play at Croke Park, but Westlife did, and we all grew up six or seven kilometres away from Croke Park, we’re all northsiders and we never got to do it.

“But any of the promoters that we worked with back in the day, they weren’t interested in trying to take the risk or the gamble in putting Boyzone in there.”

“So we took what we were offered and that was London.”

Duffy added that Boyzone had never planned to reunite for more concerts.

Last year, a three-part documentary came out on Boyzone featuring never-before-seen footage of the band, as well as interviews with band members Ronan Keating, Shane Lynch, Keith Duffy, and Mikey Graham, as well as former manager Louis Walsh.

“The documentary was something that I said no to two or three times, because it shows the vulnerability,” said Duffy.

“I’m out of that now, I’m moved on, we’re doing new things, and to go back and start to relive some of the things that happened in Boyzone, it didn’t appeal to me.

“Eventually they talked me into doing it, and we did a documentary, and it had a fantastic response.”

He added that the support Boyzone received after the documentary led to talks of “getting back together”.

Last month, Ronan Keating told BBC Radio 2’s Tracks Of My Years that it would be “incredibly unhealthy” to do a tour with Boyzone, as opposed to the current two gigs in London.

He added that the London gigs will mark the band’s “final chapter”.

“It’s a farewell tour,” Keating told BBC Radio 2.

“There’s no new music. We’re not getting the band back together again. We’re not touring across the world.

“There are offers coming in left, right and centre to go to Asia, to go into Europe. It’s a blanket no. And this is it.”

Elsewhere, Duffy this morning remarked that of the current 60-date Boyzlife tour of the UK and Ireland, the two Irish dates are the only ones that haven’t sold out.

Boyzlife are performing in the Nuremore Hotel in Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan tonight and Duffy described this as a “little warm up” before they play the Waterfront Hall in Belfast on 1 April and the 3Olympia Theatre on 3 April.

Duffy quipped that the good thing about playing in Dublin’s 3Olympia Theatre on Good Friday is that “it’s only a five-minute walk to Leo Burdocks for a fish”.