Election 2024: 'If we don’t have staff, we don’t have a business' says Cork shop owner

Kevin Herlihy, who runs seven Centra stores in Cork along with his brother Brian, tells the Irish Examiner that the Government must stop hitting businesses with cost after cost

The Herlihy family with the staff of Herlihy Centra on North Main Street. Brothers Brian and Kevin Herlihy (pictured centre front with their sister Claire) opened their first city centre store on Oliver Plunkett Street. Picture: Chani Anderson

He’s been involved in the family retail business since he was a child in the early 1980s, helping out behind the counter of his parents’ Pat and Maureen’s first small neighbourhood shop in the western suburbs of Cork city.

Today, Kevin Herlihy, along with his brother Brian, now runs that Centra store in Bishopstown, along with a chain of six other Centra stores as part of the Herlihy Group, employing more than 300 people in their stores in Fermoy and Mallow, Bishopstown, and the city centre shops, on Grand Parade, Oliver Plunkett St, North Main St, and on St Patrick’s St.