I'm not on freenode or any of the main IRC servers very often, so I can't comment there, but there's a bit of a resurgence of IRC for me via http://tilde.town, one of the many tilde servers that sprung up after http://tilde.club went viral. The server runs a local IRC instance and there's usually a few of us on there chatting during NA daytime during the week (at least, that's when I'm on, usually).
Sadly, I was slightly too late to join the original, but there are now a number of similar clubs with available space. Tilde Town is where I spend my time, and it seems to be a nice, friendly place.
