Michael Moynihan: When small businesses close, communities are never quite the same
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You can expect the knock on the door any evening now. The polite tap which precedes an exchange with canvassers and candidates, the kind of conversation which usually concludes with ‘you might think of me on the day’, or some variation of that line, as they hurry off into the gloaming.
When it comes to the substance of the conversation, your columnist is happy to make a couple of suggestions. Yes, you're well able to make your own points, no-one is saying any different, but who among us doesn’t suffer from l’esprit de l’escalier?
Of course, it would take the French to come up with a name for the feeling of disappointment when you think of the perfectly-judged retort just as you’re heading down the stairs.
Or just as you close the front door.
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But on the off-chance you’re stuck, here’s an opening gambit to try out on those who seek your vote — specific enough to get a focused answer but not so narrowly focused the candidate can plead ignorance.
What are their plans to improve the lot of small businesses in Ireland?
It seems that every week we read of yet another small enterprise closing, often after years in operation, and Cork has offered plenty of examples recently.
A quick look around Leeside shows the toll being taken on small businesses even in the last couple of weeks. A few days ago Perry Street, a cafe business with outlets in the city centre, Grange, and Ringaskiddy announced that it was closing all of those outlets.
The week before that another well-known bar and restaurant near the city closed — Blair’s in Blarney shut after almost four decades in operation.
And, of course, a couple of weeks before that again, Lennox’s, the much-loved chip shop on Cork’s southside, closed its doors for the last time, over seventy years after it opened on the Bandon Road. Even as this column was going to print, another cafe, Dunlea’s in Blackpool shut down.
These are serious losses. When small operations which are rooted in their community close down, those communities are not quite the same afterwards. Employment centre and social hub, service provider, and identifying landmark — those small businesses have different identities according to who’s using them, and all of them help to bind the people of an area into a community that isn’t just a zone sketched on a map.
Take Joseph’s Hair Salon in Glasheen, Cork. Every year owner Joe Byrne and his staff offered free haircuts to homeless people in December and aided people with addiction issues all year round. In September they put together back-to-school bags for children in need and looked after struggling families at Communion time.
Joe Byrne will close the salon at the end of this year for health reasons, but its story stands for dozens of other small business all across the country. Just as its closure will leave a huge absence in the local area, that absence is replicated all over Cork, and all over Ireland, when a genuine community business closes.
Fair enough, your candidate says, when you point out the number of small businesses closing around the country: what do you want me to do about it?
This is a trick question, of course. In this two-hander it’s the candidate who’s the one charged with coming up with imaginative and energetic responses, though the imagination and energy are dependent on one obvious precondition: recognising why those businesses are struggling in the first place.
In Cork there are plenty of problems which combine to militate against small operators. Many readers will be aware of the ongoing shambles that goes for public transport in Cork lately — the unreliable bus service can be traced to the difficulties Bus Eireann faces in recruiting drivers, and other factors, but if a customer feels the journey isn’t worth it then he or she doesn’t even try to reach their destination. Not good news for businesses at that destination.
Similarly, if an employee can’t be sure he or she can make work on time then the employer has a staffing problem.
Add in the genuine misgivings many people have about their safety in parts of Cork City, particularly at night, and the reasons for a lack of footfall become clearer, with the struggles of small business coming into sharp relief.
These problems and the way they connect to each other will be familiar to readers far beyond the borders of Cork. Recognising those connections would be a major plus for any candidate knocking on your door, though they also mean more work: if the candidate is interested in helping small businesses then the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, the Department of Transport, and the Department of Justice would have be combine to address the problems above.
There’s an existing template for TDs new and old when it comes to co-ordinated action. Perhaps the candidate at your door can get some advice from outgoing Taoiseach Simon Harris on pulling together a city centre task force.
If so, don’t forget to include the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage as well. That Department is well-placed to advise local authorities on issues which can help small businesses — and which hinder small businesses. It would be interesting to hear the views of election candidates in Cork, for instance, on the revived plans for a Kildare Village-type development near Carrigtwohill.
This project envisions dozens of retail outlets in a village-type environment: great news, no doubt, for the retail outlets in pre-existing village-type environments all over East Cork — ie real villages. Those small businesses, embedded in their communities, will probably not be affected by the vast development opening nearby.
Great news for the small businesses in Cork City also, which can now look forward to even fewer customers with this draw to the east
Great news too for a local road system which is operating on a one-more-lane-will-solve-everything approach. Already a byword for congestion and pollution, loading thousands more cars onto the existing infrastructure is bound to end well.
Great news for the local authority, Cork County Council, which went to the High Court for a judicial review overturning an order from the Office of the Planning Regulator not to rezone the land for the development. Great news for the local authority next door, Cork City Council, as commercial rates in its catchment area are likely to ... well, not such great news for Cork City Council if the proposed new development cuts even further into the footfall in the city.
Anyway, feel free to take these as your starting point.
And as your candidate beats a retreat, don’t forget to say ‘I’ll give you every consideration’.