Letters to the Editor: Staggering costs of keeping businesses safe
Businesses face a perfect storm of 'converging and competing costs'. Picture: Denis Minihane
Returning the Vat rate to 9% is touted as a panacea for all that ails the hospitality industry today.
Indeed, to do so would bring a modicum of relief to small family-run businesses but I fear that measure alone will only give temporary respite in what is a perfect storm of converging and competing costs for businesses to bear.
I do not expect many businesses to be able to pass on the reduction to customers as a result — and there is a clear and present danger of a decimation of small independent businesses in Ireland.
It’s my long-held belief that a decent social democracy can be judged accurately by the amount of thriving small independent businesses. Clearly what’s transpiring today is a bellwether event for businesses, but actually should be a clarion call for action as urgent as the housing crisis. Both issues are connected and will impact for the worse our democracy and our children’s future. Do we want an Ireland where our children can’t even dream of bootstrapping entrepreneurship?
As a publican, I spend less time pouring pints and more time filling out forms for statutory bodies that often are in contradiction of each other. It is not a bald statement to say that the time spent on these tasks which did not exist 20 years ago is probably costing me the equivalent of the Vat reduction.
An honest analysis of why it’s so expensive to stay in business in Ireland leads one to a startling revelation, and that is that the same regulatory factors that affect small businesses are affecting law and order in this State, leading to massive and unfair costs to small businesses.
The absence of visible policing in our cities has levied an invisible tax on our businesses and thus our citizens. The cost of providing private security for all businesses has reached staggering levels. The fact that not only the pub but the local ice cream parlour, optician, and florist now have to call on private security just to keep their customers safe comes a cost that dwarfs any Vat reduction. Many don’t have security but are paying for it in having extra staff to lock up because it’s unsafe to have someone on their own now in many businesses.
There are many reasons why we have a lack of law and order in this country and it’s not the fault of the gardaí.
Some good work has been done on public liability insurance and premia are coming down, but it looks like private security has become an auxiliary police now on our streets. Businesses and consumers are paying for this and some will ultimately pay by closing their doors.
Therefore let’s not get consumed by the Vat rate; rather, a metric should be established that allows businesses relief for costs incurred by theft, menace, and antisocial behaviour until we as a country reassert order on our streets.
I live in New York and am a subscriber to GAAGo. I use it exactly as it was intended — for those around the world that can’t get the TV broadcast.
I watched both classic games, Limerick v Cork and Tipperary v Cork. And they were both classics, no doubt about it.
However, while watching the Limerick game I was thinking of my nephew back in Mallow and was hoping that he was watching with his two little girls, who are just starting to get the bug for the game.
I was almost in tears when I heard they actually missed both games. A terrible travesty! Shameful to say the least.
How out of touch can Croke Park actually be? Can they actually expect that a young family of two little girls, a mom, and a dad, crowd around a 15in laptop screen to watch a hurling match?
I agree with Simon Harris and many others that the GAA, in this case, have it all wrong. They have become money grabbers.
The game still needs to be exposed and not hidden for the sake of a few euro.
Any death is a sadness and the deceased will be missed by family and friends, and they will speak well of the deceased, but should they always?
Wikipedia’s article on Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi includes: “For his role on the so-called death committee during the 1988 executions of Iranian political prisoners, he became known as the ‘Butcher of Tehran’.”
This is not the behaviour of a person we should miss but one that the world would be better without.
Each day there are plenty of good, hard-working, family people who die and will be well remembered by everyone. These are the people we will miss.
Perhaps there might be an acceptable compromise solution for the New York-Dublin portal that may well stop further antisocial behaviour from spoiling this wonderful, international social experiment.
This solution might be to have a time delay of several seconds before whatever happens on the Dublin end of the portal can be seen over on the New York end, while likewise whatever happens on the New York end of the portal should also take several seconds of a delay before it too can be seen on the Dublin side.
By causing such a delay, any type of unacceptable social behaviour could be spotted in time and then blocked before it can be seen on either side of the portal.
This small adjustment in how members of the public may appear to behave on both sides of the portal could still allow this type of new interactive communication to remain as something particularly innovative and special without it becoming offensive to anyone.
Like how the communication delays that US astronauts had between the Moon and Earth did a lot, I believe, to increase the memorability of the astronauts' Moon voyage, so too might any necessary added delays to the New York-Dublin portal experience also add much to its memorability for all those who would experience it.
The Neurological Alliance of Ireland has said that several specialist nursing posts were not being filled because of the HSE recruitment embargo.
Meanwhile, thousands of children are waiting months for special needs assessments and there are now huge waiting lists.
I am at a loss as to why the Government cannot lift this embargo.
There is something fundamentally and morally wrong to hear of so many children with special needs being on these prodigious waiting lists.
As a former member of An Garda Síochána, I wish to highlight, once again, my dismay at the way Scott Medals are awarded.
Some Scott Medals can be awarded within a matter of years or less, but some, that I am going to highlight, take decades. One has to ask the question: Why?
In October 1976, gardaí went to a vacant house in Garryhinch, near Portarlington. They were lured there by an anonymous caller on the spurious assumption that a TD was to be murdered.
That call cost the life of one Garda Michael Clerkin and seriously injured other members present, blinding and partially deafening one other member. Yet it took the awards board of An Garda Síochána 42 years to acknowledge the sacrifices these members made.
Another garda, Donal Kelleher, who was shot in both legs by the IRA in 1983, only received his Scott Medal in 2023, 40 years after the event.
Sergeant PJ Gallagher and Garda Thomas McGuinness, who were kidnapped in Sligo in 1983, only received their Scott Medal 40 years later.
I have applied for the family of Garda Robert McCallion to receive a Scott Medal. Garda McCallion, known to his colleagues and friends as Robbie, died after having tried to stop a stolen car in Tara Court, Letterkenny, in March 2009, passing away from his injuries on April 7, 2009. Garda Gary McLaughlin also died in the line of duty in the same year in Donegal.
I, like many of my past and serving colleagues, want to understand why the delays in awarding Scott Medals to those who sacrificed, or put their lives in jeopardy, are denied.
Those denials by unseen faces in Garda HQ inflicts further deep wounds and hardship among family members of those members of all ranks who lost their lives or were seriously injured in the course of their duties.
This scandal shows a lack of empathy and urgency by the awards boards, past and present, and a need for it to be removed, or reconstituted in a different format, from those who oversee it.
Shame on those who denied and still deny Garda members that which they justly deserve.
I have been researching the use of modular building to assist with the housing crisis and it has many benefits as a Housing First solution. But housing is not the only requirement... although rapid mass housing will be beneficial.
There has to be a commitment to services to match the housing, and employment in nearby areas, especially for refugees and homeless people. The cost and efforts in doing the planning will provide quality and long-term benefits not only to residents but to the country of Ireland, developing the State.
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