Leasing laws ‘put jobs in danger’

SEVERAL thousand retail workers face unemployment if significant changes aren’t made to existing commercial rent/lease legislation, according to one of the sector’s leading representative bodies.

Retail Ireland – the IBEC-affiliated representative organisation – has called on Government, specifically the Department of Justice and the Tánaiste’s office, to make a number of changes to current legislation, which is seeing a significant number of companies struggle.

“Unless there is lease reform, many more retail staff – several thousand, at least – will join the 30,000 retail employees who went on the Live Register in 2009,” Retail Ireland’s director Torlach Denihan warned yesterday.