Sir, - As a former secretary of the Dublin City Centre Business Association the attitude of the Dublin City Council towards its main source of income - the business community of central Dublin - has always been known to me as being one of total incomprehension and absolute ideology. The business ratepayers are to be mulched in favour of any popular catch-all and electoral gain particularly at the whiff of an election. On Monday night, April 28th, the City Council voted to have more street traders located on Dublin's primary and secondary shopping streets.
Street trading was an honourable profession with the no cost profits being hard earned. They were long, hard and arduous days, but the then traders had their own code of ethics and a binding camaraderie which enveloped and protected them in the good days and the bad days, which was also extended to their own, the people of Dublin. Visitors came, looked and recorded. They never bought and the traders humoured them.
Today the scene is different and so are the street traders. Moore Street is dead, anchored only to memory and false hope. Illegal traders have overspilled on to Henry Street to the detriment and fear of those who lawfully shop and lawfully trade there. The street is a meeting ground for criminals and potential criminals, with the goods for sale being of dubious quality and questionable origin. The gardai are hampered and disincentivised, with court efforts being ridiculed with limited fines. Sources indicate that a Henry Street pram generates a daily £100 profit.
The Dublin City Council has an honourable tradition of service to the citizens of this great city. Dublin Corporation is the finest local authority in all of Ireland and, apart from hiccoughs, such as the trough in O'Connell Street and the wrong location of Molly Malone, has a record of achievement.
Their combined blind spot is the spending of the ratepayers' money. The excellent cleansing department are out at dawn every morning to hose away the human filth whilst the creators of that filth hang in there waiting for the start of another shopping day and another day for them to beg, steal, spend and doss.
Any extension of street trading in our primary and secondary streets will indubitably result in reduced shop and store spending, the consequences of which will reverberate throughout the city. The take from Dublin's commercial life will reduce and continue to reduce with an obvious impact on services. This annual take circles £50 million in rates, £400 million in taxes and an employment content of 1,800 people.
Street traders should have their own trading area away from the primary and secondary streets, though the offer to provide such an off-street arcade was refused. In the last decade the business community offered the City Council a co-partnership in ordering the administration of central Dublin. The offer was not reciprocated. Irish-owned stores are facing subsidised competition from an unrestricted economic invasion whose profits go overseas. Mega suburban shopping centres add to that competition. Yet Dublin still has its own allure and its beckoning welcome atmosphere. Any extension of street trading will erode that atmosphere. It can be saved by co-partnership, of which the essential ingredient is trust. - Yours, etc.,
Upper Kilmacud Road, Dublin 14.