Bitcoin client IRC - a potential network weak link?
They'd have no problem finding peers for several reasons:


Once the client finds a single peer, it can get a list of peers from that peer.
The client has a built-in list of about 500 peer IP addresses known to be stable.
The client knows several DNS names (such as bitseed.xf2.org and dnsseed.bluematt.me) that resolve to lists of Bitcoin peers.
The client stores peer addresses in a local database.


In fact, IRC has been removed from the Bitcoin client since 2013.