Nowhere at all do you assign a value to $kernal. Of course does it contain an undefined value.

update: I checked the example code in POE::Component::IRC. their code talks about "$kernel". Perhaps you just have a typo?

I am assuming use of that module automatically uses (and assigns to) the (global) variable $kernel. I'm not sure about that.

Nope, I doubt it. I think you actually have to combine this module with plain POE. Bad module documenters. This is not clear at all.