TOWN BANKING ON HOMEGROWN SURVIVAL EFFORT
THE enterprise centre on Youghal’s Emmet Place is a symbol of what the East Cork seaside town is, was and wants to be.
A stunning 16th century building that was part of St Mary’s Collegiate Church, it is a beacon of light for a town that has lost up to 2,000 jobs over the past two decades due to the export of manufacturing jobs overseas.
For a low fee, entrepreneurs can avail of fully furnished office space, fast broadband speeds, a free telephone line and have their electricity and heating bills paid. In the words of Helen Coady, who runs the centre, it gives “people help when they need it most — during start up”.
The famed walled town is now placing its emphasis for the future on entrepreneurship and tourism. They’ve learnt their lesson about how multinationals can pack up and leave with a few hours notice.
They now want to exploit fully their tourism potential and develop sustainable small businesses as a source of future employment.
Cork county manager Martin Riordan declared when he opened the centre: “The new vision for Youghal incorporates its past by revitalising its heritage, enhancing Youghal’s significant natural resources, including marine, conservation and ecology areas.”
From the 1960s onwards, Youghal was renowned for its factories, particularly textile manufacturing. However earlier this year, its last factory ceased production. Danish-owned Tytex, which developed and made medical textiles at the Springfield Industrial Estate. At its peak, Tytex employed 150 workers.
In 2007, the closure of office supplies manufacturer, Elba had seen the loss of another 55 jobs. The year previous it had been 92 jobs at Courtisan Carpets and in 2003, the former Eastman Kodak left with the loss of 200 jobs while Artesyn Technologies’ exit in 2002 saw 160 jobs go.
Youghal Carpets, Seafield Fabrics, Blackwater Cottons and Bryant Rubbers have all also closed their doors.
Youghal Chamber of Commerce PRO and publican, Michael Farrell says that “the construction boom masked the jobs losses for a long time but now with the recession and everything, tourism is our only established industry”.
The chamber has long been campaigning to upgrade beach facilities in Youghal and they wanted to see funds earmarked in the 2011 budget for this.
“We need an upgrading of the front strand, improved quay facilities with toilets, showers etc,” says Mr Farrell. He and the other chamber members are also looking for more land around Youghal to be zoned for caravan and camping parks, now that there is greater competition around land use.
“There is a huge demand for camping and caravan parks, now more than ever. Our town is not really a viable tourist destination without them.”
Youghal county councillor and town councillor, Sinn Féin’s Sandra McLellan points out that the town has unrivalled beaches and a stunning river.
“We have two blue flag beaches and that is a huge asset to us. Foreigners take blue flag status very seriously and will base their holiday around access to these beaches. The Quality Inn reckons the blue flags are worth 18 jobs a year to them alone.”
Youghal has long been a holiday favourite among Cork city dwellers with thousands of mothers and their children relocating to holiday homes in the town for the long school holidays.
Surprisingly, auctioneer Diarmuid Keogh, whose family have been in business in the town for 40 years, says such holiday home properties are still selling unlike the residential sector which is frozen.
Up in Bawnmore and White Barn on the hills outside the town, Murphy Construction and McInerney Homes were separately granted planning permission three years ago to build 366 and 298 houses in what would have been a massive development for the town. However the construction implosion hastily ended those plans with the lands in the hands of NAMA now.
“The first-time buyers market has been decimated by the lack of funding from the banks and this means that people aren’t trading up either as they can’t sell on their original home,” said Diarmuid.
“We’re lucky in that the holiday home sector and retirement home sector are still moving. People with money can see that there is value there. At the moment, there’s a return north of 8% on some investment properties — if you can access the funds.”
Mr Keogh, who is also a member of the Youghal Chamber of Commerce, says the property market will only come back to life when the overall economy is stimulated.
“The economy needs a stimulus. Confidence needs to return in the country and that will help kickstart the property market. If one improves, it will lift the other.
“There’s a lot of potential in Ireland still. Most Irish town centres are dormant with nobody living in them. We need future tax incentives to make them functioning residential areas,” he said.
Like many other towns in Ireland, Youghal is having problems attracting people into the town to shop never mind to live.
In recent weeks, two more town centre businesses, Chez Marie and Gowrans, closed their shutters for the last time — victims of consumers’ dwindling disposable income.
Rent, rates and electricity are constantly blamed for making businesses unviable. Sammy Revins, a Fianna Fáil councillor and local butcher, says he has “tried”, and failed, “to keep rates low”.
“It’s a rating office in Dublin that sets them and so it’s nearly impossible to communicate from the ground. It’s not the fault of the local authorities.”
He says his own business has been suffering hugely at the hands of supermarkets who “are selling meat cheaper than I can buy it”.
Mr Revins is more than aware of public anger with his party and admits that he “won’t be knocking on people’s doors this general election.
“People know where I am in the shop if they want to talk to me”. He believes Fianna Fáil have “lost touch with reality” and need to “return to listening to the people”.
Kay Curtin of Condon’s Florists on North Main Street is adamant though that the people of Youghal can’t focus on what’s gone wrong but must try to focus on what they can do to support the town.
She points to recent positives such as the scheme whereby the town council offered to pay 50% of the cost of painting shopfronts. Up to 26 shops availed of the scheme which also gave a supply of local work to local painters.
Cllr McLellan agrees wholeheartedly and talks of the €200,000 given by the council towards restoring the town’s ancient walls. Talking to the people of Youghal, they repeatedly voiced fears about the difficulty of keeping children in college and paying mortgages during this great recession.
Liam McLellan, the husband of Cllr McLellan, says his fear is for his children. He lost his job at Tytex earlier this year.
“My fear is not for myself but for the kids. Will we be left on our own when they are all forced to emigrate? What is being done to create jobs for them?”
Fine Gael TD, David Stanton thundered last year that the Government had “abandoned Youghal over the past decade”. However, the Chamber of Commerce and town council is increasingly coming to the view that they must rely on nobody but themselves to rejuvenate the town.
Back in the Enterprise Centre, Tom Connolly, who runs a business development and consultancy IT company, is emailing his clients in France, Germany, India and Shannon. He describes himself as a “virtual emigrant” thanks to Enterprise Centre. Sitting at his desk in Youghal, he does business worldwide thanks to the web and fast broadband speeds.
“There isn’t the level of business in this country and the broadband speeds at the Enterprise Centre allow me to work anywhere from this office. I also do work with the South Cork Enterprise Board and the University of Limerick. The facilities at the Enterprise Centre are fantastic and it’s great to able to bring them in here.”
For the people of Youghal, this is just the type of growing business that they hope will pull them out of the current doldrums.
Mother
BREDA Gardiner’s greatest fear at present is that her 20-year-old daughter, Kate, won’t be able to find nursing work in Ireland.
She’s already lost one of her two children to emigration and says the prospect of a second packing their bags “devastates” her. Kate is a third year nursing student at UCC and already she has “spoken about emigration” as “there are no nursing jobs coming up here anymore”.
“It really is no joke. I’m devastated at the thought that she might go too. There are some of us that never saw the Celtic Tiger yet now we are educating our children to emigrate. It’s horrible.”
Breda, who lives in the Seafield area of Youghal, is a separated office administrator who lost her job just two months ago. Over the past number of years, she has done a raft of training courses and is hoping her increased skills base, that includes an accountant technician course, will help her find work after Christmas. “What I want out of the budget is to see a plan to make the economy improve. We need to urgently start creating jobs again. We can’t keep on sending our children off on planes.”
Her son William is in Canada since August last year where he is working as an operations manager at a Toronto nightclub. He won’t be home for Christmas, wasn’t home last year and she never got to celebrate his 21st birthday with him either. “It was so hard to get used to the house without him. But no matter how much I miss him, I know that he’s better off over there as there’s nothing here,” she says. “I have to keep on telling myself that.”
Job creation for young and old.
No job incentives and viciously unfair on the poor.
Enterprise Centre
FROM the Enterprise Centre in Youghal, Tom Connolly does IT-based business with Argentina, France and Germany.
However, the ex-Apple employee is also working on his new business project — a concept with enormous potential, he believes — the sale of musical instruments fashioned from Irish animal bones.
A talented musician (Tom plays the mandolin, banjo and piano), he is also a bones player. “Bones are the second oldest instrument in the world after the human voice. They are used across cultures and you see them being played in some of the Irish music scenes in the movie, the Titanic.”
While he says there is wide interest in bones-playing across the world — everyone from cowboys to Scottish musicians have played them over the years — the craft sector would be his likely main market.
“Bones would be seen as a very unique instrument and I can design them to have photographs or drawings mounted on them. They are a fantastic percussion instrument. Mel Mercer, the well-known UCC percussion lecturer and musician plays them, for instance.”
So how do you make bones? Well the bones have to be boiled, baked in a hot oven for 2/3 hours, hollowed and then carved into shape. At present, all of this work is being done at Michael’s own home with the help of his 11-year-old son, Nathan who is already fascinated with the instrument.
“I’m getting my bones from Michael Twomey in Macroom who is a guaranteed Irish butcher. It’s a labour intensive production so I’m hoping to hire some employees once it takes off. We’re hoping to go into proper production early next year.”
For Tom, the retention of corporation tax at 12.5% is the single most important element of the 2011 budget. “That allows us to do business all over the world”.
Redundancies in public sector management and a reduction in TD and senator numbers.
Pleased with retention of corporation tax rate.
Unemployed
TONY HENNESSY, 48, is married with four children, aged 16 to 18 months.
Up until recently he was working on the construction of the Bord Gáis electricity plant at Whitegate in East Cork. However with its official opening earlier this week, he found himself without work earlier this year for the first time in 15 years. Many of his former work colleagues have taken jobs in France and Germany, he says, where their employer, John Sisk Construction is developing power plants. With four children, this isn’t an option for him, he says.
The lack of construction jobs in this country is well documented but Tony says that where construction and factory work is available, the increased usage of agencies and subcontractors is doing damage to the pay and conditions of employees.
“When I lost my job earlier this year, I got rid of my car as my wife has a car. If I get a new job, I need some kind of job security as the first thing I have to do is buy a car, tax and insure it.
“I’ve scouted for work but most of it is through agencies. Agencies aren’t paying the proper rate and they’re not paying travel to work. There is also no job security.
“I know of one guy who got a job with Hasbro Toys in Waterford through an agency. He was told it was a week on, week off job.
“He worked his first week and was then told by the agency that was it. Sorry no more work. They had a glut of production to get rid of and that was that, they didn’t need him again.”
Tony, who lives in the Town Walls area of Youghal, also laments the demise of the fishing industry in the seaside town, an indigenous industry that he says collapsed in the face of competition from overseas super trawlers. “There isn’t half a dozen fishing boats here now. The only fish coming into this town is Donegal Catch and that’s through the airport. Cork Airport is the biggest port in these parts now.”
Job creation and investment in industry.
Nothing to get country back to work. Unjust cuts.
Shop owner, Main Street
MERRICK’S department store on North Main Street in Youghal is the oldest department store in the country.
Built in 1580, Lil Danne has owned the business for the past 16 years. She says that up to three years ago, it was a “brilliant” business but now the recession, competition from low-cost international retailers and the lack of free parking in the town has all combined to drive business downwards.
“The lack of free parking is the bane of our lives. It is totally affecting the numbers coming into town but despite our best efforts, we can’t get the town council to cut the parking costs in the run-up to Christmas.
“It’s putting us at a huge disadvantage. Even to allow reduced parking costs on a Saturday would make a huge difference.”
When Lil took over Merrick’s, she had 16 staff. In recent weeks, she opened a smaller clothes shop on North Main Street, but now she only has 10 staff working between both premises.
Many of the employees are also on reduced working hours.
“People are buying in Penneys. They have changed their purchasing and it’s all about affordability. We’ve changed too buying less stock and also losing a lot of the higher end products.
“This year was hard. Our turnover is down by over 50%.
“The closure of Tytex and Artesyn Technologies really affected us. We always had payment deposit schemes in place but you can see, they are really being used now.
“Every retailer on North Main Street says the same thing: it’s rent, rates and utilities that are choking them. We’re trying to sell on the lease of Merrick's as we just can’t afford the rent of €52,000 per year plus rates and utilities. The overheads are killing us.”
A move by the Government to support small business and jump-start spending.
Spending will drop further.
Publican
THE only viable industry in Youghal these days is tourism, says Michael Farrell, the owner of Summerfield Bar on the outskirts of the town.
“We are totally dependent on tourism as we have lost more than 2,000 jobs here in recent years. There were also another 1,000 jobs lost in service industries providing to those factories.”
Michael says the Government “has been found wanting” when it comes to Youghal, failing repeatedly to invest in infrastructure in the town.
“Tourism has improved in this town due to an increased marketing effort by the Chamber of Commerce and the town council. Last summer we also benefited from the good weather.
“However, we need to upgrade the quay area and need toilets and showers and the like developed at the beach. Our beaches need to be comparable to France. If the Government were to invest in this, they would reap rewards through increased tourism and the boost in employment.”
Like many of the other business people in the town, he says his greatest financial pressure is rate payment and electricity. He says that excise duty is another factor making “pubs in Ireland the most expensive to run in the world.”
Farrell, who is also PRO of the Vintners Association and the local Chamber of Commerce, says the Government needs to start seeing the Irish pub as the major tourist attraction it is.
“They are visited more than any other tourist attraction in Ireland, more than the Cliffs of Moher or Blarney Castle. Yet, we’ve had the cost of a late night bar extension doubled in recent years making late night entertainment, which tourists seek, unviable.”
The Government must tackle below-cost selling in supermarkets and not touch excise duty.
Happy with excise duty decision. It will protect jobs and support the tourism industry.
Florist, North Main Street
KAY CURTIN, who runs Condon’s Florists on North Main Street, is refusing to give in to the recession and last week shut up shop for a few hours so she could personally organise a group advertisement in one of the local East Cork newspapers. Dozens of the town’s traders joined together to advertise as a bloc entity, reducing their individual costs.
“I just keep on trying to be positive and I would just try and encourage people to do their shopping in our town and not elsewhere. We’re suffering a lot from people going to the bigger shops in Cork and Dungarvan,” she said, a statement that was echoed by all the Youghal traders we met. ”They’re going to Dungarvan and to Midleton. Aldi and Lidl is attracting the people out of town for the heavy shopping. People will have to start supporting the town.”
If there’s any main street business that is feeling the economic squeeze, it’s florists. Aside from weddings and graduation balls, their offerings are now seen as being beyond the purse of many.
“We used to have builders that would throw up €60 or €70 for whatever bouquet was in the shop window. They wouldn’t think twice of it. That’s all gone,” she said.
Prices have been cut in response but it’s making little difference. Kay is an Interflora agent and says many of their prices have been cut in half. A bunch of four lily stems that would have cost €50 during the boom can be bought for just €35 now.
Kay believes spending has frozen since last August as people were so scared of the budget. She wanted people to start spending again.
Middle incomes have been even more squeezed.
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