* Eriberto Mota <eriberto@debian.org>, 2014-08-21, 16:16:
4. libircclient-dev.install: remove .a. From Maintainers Guide[2]:Shared libraries are distributed as *.so files. (Neither *.a files nor *.la files)
Policy §8.3 permits shipping static libraries in the -dev package: “The static library (<libraryname.a>) is usually provided in addition to the shared version. It is placed into the development package […].”
-- Jakub Wilk