Irish Examiner view: Retail outlet back on track

Impact on communities

We learned this week that the large-scale retail development planned for East Cork is now back on track, with developers hoping to start pre-planning talks with Cork County Council.

As outlined here, the plans for a retail village-type outlet are ambitious: Phase one of the development would create 16,000sq m of floor space, attract 220,000 shoppers annually, and create 850 jobs when completed.

The question which must be asked is the potential impact on the outlet’s hinterland — this consists of small towns and villages, each of which has a commercial ecosystem of its own. The retail outlets in those small towns and villages are unlikely to benefit from an enormous outlet being opened up nearby, to put it mildly.

Coincidentally, yesterday’s newspaper also carried the news of the closure of Con Murphy’s clothing store on St Patrick’s Street in Cork after 91 years in operation — the epitome of a small-scale family business focused on its own corner of the retail trade.

That closure is not linked to the plans for East Cork, obviously, but if that development goes ahead it has the potential to have a similar effect on businesses in the area — businesses which are not just rooted in the communities they serve, but which are integral to the very identity of those communities.

The potential impact of such a large-scale outlet in other areas is another concern.

Despite being adjacent to a dual carriageway, the planned location is near enough to one of the most notorious traffic blackspots in the entire country, the Dunkettle Interchange, for it to have an impact on traffic flow across the entire city of Cork. 

If the prediction of 220,000 shoppers in a year comes true, that could cause utter chaos along a stretch of roadway already synonymous with gridlock at rush hour; the carbon footprint of those shoppers is yet another problem.

Even in these challenging times for retail outlets of all sizes, it is difficult to see the benefits outweighing the potential drawbacks of this development.