That error is because it can't establish a socket
connection to that host. Make sure that the name resolves
correctly from that machine outside of your program and that
you can connect with something else.
Net::IRC is deprecated and not being actively supported
(people keep stepping up to un-deprecate it again and again,
but last I'd heard it was back unsupported). POE::Component::IRC
is actively being developed, actively supported, and uses
POE (and hence, cool).