Sorry that I didn't reply earlier.

In Net::IRC::Connection, there's a connect() sub, that has this piece of code:

#    my $sock = IO::Socket::INET->new(PeerAddr => $self->server,
#                    PeerPort => $self->port,
#                    Proto    => "tcp",
#                   );

    $sock = Symbol::gensym();
    unless (socket( $sock, PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, getprotobyname('tcp')
+ )) {
        carp ("Can't create a new socket: $!");
    $self->error(1);
    return;
    }
[download]

Uncomment the upper part and comment out the part below, it should work then.