Why is there no IRCS in Special:Interwiki? IRCS should be preferred over IRC, 'cause its secure. All Template:Channel transclusions are linking to insecure connections.
Could IRCS be added to the mw-extension Interwiki (also respectively for the prefixes freenode, ircrc, rcirc)?
Alternatively, could the URLs of these prefixes just be changed to the IRCS protocol (all listed servers do support IRCS, also all up-to date irc clients). This would eliminate all insecure links to irc, including thousands of Template:Channel transclusions.