Invest in city, urges Chamber boss

Cork business people have to make a choice — stay in Cork city for the summer and make the city thrive or disappear to their holiday homes in West Cork.

The president of Cork Chamber of Commerce, John Mullins said Cork business people need to get involved in hosting events like the Ocean Race or the Tall Ships if they want to reap the economic dividends these events bring.

“It is 1991 since the Tall Ships came to the city. If we look at the economic dividend that fundamentally Galway and Dublin have had over the summer period, the question mark for us is, do we as a business community decide to go to West Cork in August or are we interested in actually supporting the domestic economy in our city?” the outgoing CEO of Bord Gáis said.

Mr Mullins was a Cork Chamber of Commerce business breakfast in association with the Irish Examiner in the Cork Airport hotel.

He said these events come about because business people get together and decide to make it happen for that region. He credited Martin Naughton, chairman of the Glen Dimplex group for bringing the Navy vs Notre Dame American football game to Dublin.

In order to facilitate Cork to hold big summer events Mr Mullins said Cork needed to go ahead with two key infrastructure projects. He called on Chamber members to get behind the redevelopment of Páirc Uí Chaoimh, and urged Cork City Council to choose a site and bidder for the development of a Cork convention centre.

“It is very important from a business perspective, from a tourism perspective, for the construction sector that Páirc Uí Chaoimh gets redeveloped and we as a chamber should be supporting that. In addition to that we should encourage the city council to push forward on selecting a bidder for a convention centre for Cork city,” he said.

Mr Mullins said the time was right for investment in infrastructure as the sentiment towards Ireland was improving internationally. In his day job a CEO of Bord Gáis, Mr Mullins said he had knowledge of the improved sentiment towards Ireland demonstrated clearly in the recent €600m ESB bond auction that had been massively oversubscribed. Mr Mullins said that ESB received €3bn in offers of money and that people who are willing to bet on an Irish utility are actually willing to bet on the Irish economy.

“This was a significant corporate event with €600m coming into the Irish economy for Irish infrastructure. It was five times oversubscribed and German money was one fifth of it. This would not have happened 12 months ago,” he said.