Marks & Spencer to open €14m Dublin store

BRITISH retailing giant Marks & Spencer is to spend €14 million on a new store at the Blanchardstown Centre in Dublin.

It will open before the end of the year and will bring to five the number of M&S stores in Ireland.

The company has existing stores in Dublin’s Mary Street and Grafton Street, as well as in the Liffey Valley centre in west Dublin and in Patrick Street in Cork.

There are also three food-only M&S Simply Food outlets in the IFSC in Dublin, Dun Laoghaire and Naas, Co Kildare. The Blanchardstown store is part of a €60 million investment programme that will see another new store in Dundrum in south Dublin, which will open in early 2005.

Divisional executive Neil Hyslop said the group had looked to open a store in north Dublin for some time and that Blanchardstown met all of its criteria and was an excellent location.

The Blanchardstown centre is close to the M50 ring and lies on the N3 route that links the city with Navan in Co Meath and the north-west of the country.

The centre opened in 1996 and has over 500,000 square feet of retail space and 160 units. The store will take up almost 40,000 square feet and will be the anchor tenant in the centre’s new Red Mall extension. Stephen Vernon, chairman of Green Property, which owns the centre, said he was confident the new M&S store would be a success. M&S first came to Ireland in 1979 and opened its Cork store in 1988. It spent €4.3m on a renewal programme in Patrick Street in 2002.

The company declined to comment on further expansion plans here, but its presence in the Republic remains less prominent than in Northern Ireland, where the group has seven stores. that sell both clothing and food.

Market observers expect the group to open a second store in Cork or to target cities like Limerick or Galway in due course.

M&S currently employs more than 1,400 people in the Republic and a further 1,500 in Northern Ireland. Its stores account for over 300,000 square feet of retail space on each side of the border.