Sir, – The indigenous retail sector in Ireland continues to struggle today after eight years of falling turnover, totalling 33 per cent in many cases. For example, a retail business with annual turnover of €500,000 in 2006 has lost € 165,000 per annum, all before costs, overhead expenses, charges and taxes. These are huge losses in revenue. Real figures, real losses and real people, many of them self-employed citizens. Many firms are no longer profitable, and this is why we all see so many vacant commercial premises, shops and offices across Ireland today. This is the shocking reality for those who have survived thus far. Dublin is different because of visitor and tourist footfall, which has cushioned the severity of the downturn for the capital. There is a dual economy in place now, with business outside Dublin continuing the grim struggle to survive. All other city centres, town centres and villages are devastated, as vitality and viability are absent.
Ireland’s national minimum wage is ranked seventh highest out of 214 countries worldwide, right up at the top with the highest.
Increasing competition through the presence of international multiples and online shopping is exacerbating a most difficult situation, with significant money now leaving Ireland.
Indigenous retail cannot dream of pay rises until lost turnover is fully recovered, and this will take many, many more years. Pay rises now will kill off job creation, and more businesses in retail.
Indigenous retail is adversely affected by the national minimum wage, because it does not involve either productivity gains or considerations. It is a political tool. It is a very blunt instrument designed to force pay rises on retail businesses that currently cannot afford cost increases under any heading. – Yours, etc,
J MURPHY,
Limerick.
Sir, – The naysayers against a rise in the minimum wage forecast that a rise at the bottom would just push all wages up to an unsustainable level. If this is the argument upon which they triumph, then let us apply the same argument to the housing market.
Every time a person with more money than brains at the top of the housing ladder pays over the guide price for a property, they drag every property price in the country higher as a consequence. Of course the Government loves this as it will increase the property tax that each homeowner in the country has to pay.
So, if the less well-off get more money it’s bad; whereas if the rich throw the banks’ money around, that’s sound economics. – Yours, etc,
DARREN WILLIAMS,
Dublin 18.