Staff told 'they’ll be gotten on way home' as retailers highlight shoplifting issues

Damage to a shop in Dublin following the riots in the city. File picture: RollingNews.ie

A Dublin retailer has described how the recent riots in the city had made him feel “very prophetic” after he wrote to Justice Minister Helen McEntee in July to tell her that “something very serious is going to happen”.

Michael O’Sullivan, the proprietor of a Spar on Talbot Street, just off O’Connell Street in the city centre, wrote to Ms McEntee after an assault on American tourist Stephen Termini close to his shop, which left Mr Termini in a coma, to say the incident had been “nothing unusual for me”.

Addressing the Oireachtas trade committee, convened to discuss the issue of shoplifting which is estimated to cost the economy €1.6bn per year, Mr O’Sullivan said he had told Ms McEntee that “there is foreboding in the city centre, something is building, something very serious is going to happen”.

Mr O’Sullivan claimed he notes between five and 10 incidents of thieving in his shop each day.

On a recent Sunday morning, four youths had attempted to steal two crates of beer and three bottles of wine from his store. When he had challenged them he had been kicked in the side, forcing him to let his assailants go.

That’s where the serious stuff is, where you don’t know their level, if you have to let them go or not.

He said that despite having pressed the store’s panic button, and Store Street Garda Station only being 300 yards away, it had been eight minutes before gardaí arrived on the scene.

The committee heard repeatedly that a lack of Garda presence and obvious deterrents has fueled the rise in shoplifting and petty thefts of retailers across the country.

Colin Fee, the proprietor of three stores in Dundalk, one of which “is a lot more troublesome than the others”, said that one particular offender who was aged under 16 “must’ve done us 100 times”.

“The older he got the more vicious and aggressive he got. He ended up pulling a knife. Now he’s in Oberstown. Why did it take so long?” he said.

Mr Fee noted that abuse of his staff is “constant every day, they’re being threatened, they’re being abused”.

“We’ve got staff who are being told they’ll be gotten on their way home,” he said.

Mr Fee said the constant robbery incidents he is now dealing with have made him consider his future.

“The last few years I’m thinking, why am I doing this? And I’m thinking it more and more,” he said.

'They come in organised gangs...on their wretched electric scooters'

Noel Dunne, a Centra owner on Parnell Street in Dublin, said that he is “out €60,000 or €70,000 a year before we turn on a light” due to constant low-level robbery incidents.

“If we do a stock take it’s at least €25,000 a year in lost stock alone,” he said, adding that paying a security guard for 25 hours per week costs him an additional €35,000 per annum, and yet still he knows that “€30,000 will walk out the door no matter what”.

“They come in organised gangs, four or five in it together, they come on their wretched electric scooters, 14- to 16-year-olds, and they’re completely brazen because they know they can’t be touched, they run out the door and that’s it,” he said.

Mr Dunne noted that he has 14 security cameras, which “may seem excessive, but nothing is better than a uniform walking past my store”.

He said that following the Dublin riots, four of his workers who are migrants wouldn’t come to work in the following days as they feared for their safety. He said his store had been a “nicer” place to work in the weeks after due to heightened Garda presence in the city during that time.

Calling for a revamp in terms of the community Garda system, he said that his problems stem from a “tiny minority” and that his customers want to come back to support him.

“Absolutely people want to come back. They want to help their city, to defy this thing,” he said.