All thanks go to @W3bhunt3r for the news:

IRC currently down

For now, there is no ETA on a fix but we are investigating the issue. It might take until tomorrow for the service to be back up. If these issues persist we will be migrating the IRC server to a brand new one.

Just a reminder of the details of the back-up channel.
Network: irc.p2p-network.net:6666 (7000 for SSL)
Channel: #apl-chat

Sorry for the service interruption.

Update...

We're happy to inform you that the IRC services have been restored.

-APL Staff-