Letters to the Editor: We need to act to keep dying retail sector alive

Shoppers on Grafton Street in Dublin. 'Every vacant shopfront on a main street represents more than a failed business. It represents lost employment, lost footfall, lost local identity, lost community life, and fewer opportunities for the next generation.' File picture: Bloomberg

As our main streets are being decimated with shop closures, a whole demographic of retail is dying before our eyes. Bakers, fish mongers, tailors, newsagents, in fact the term shopkeeper is becoming an unknown job description to the current generation.

Every vacant shopfront on a main street represents more than a failed business. It represents lost employment, lost footfall, lost local identity, lost community life, and fewer opportunities for the next generation to work, trade and build livelihoods in their own towns.

Retail as we know it is changing dramatically. Bricks and mortar retail is shrinking and that is likely continue for sometime but we can make sure that a sustainable retail trading environment survives.

For too long, national policy has treated town-centre retail as if it can survive on sentiment alone. It cannot. Independent retailers are being asked to carry rising wages, insurance, utilities, rents, compliance costs and commercial rates, while competing with online platforms, out-of-town retail parks and planning decisions that drain life from the traditional main street.

The Government must now act decisively.

First, commercial rates for small and independent town-centre retailers should be abolished or radically reformed. Rates are a tax on physical presence. They punish the very businesses that keep our streets active, safe and economically productive.

Second, targeted grants should be introduced for local retail businesses that occupy town-centre units, create employment, improve shopfronts, invest in accessibility, or bring vacant premises back into use.

Third, planning policy must be rebalanced in favour of town centres. Retail should be directed first to main streets and town cores, not automatically to edge-of-town retail parks and car-dependent commercial zones.

The “town centre first” principle must become a binding planning rule, not a slogan.

Fourth, Government must recognise that retail is not simply another sector. It is civic infrastructure. It gives young people their first jobs, gives older people places to meet, gives families reasons to come into town, and gives communities a shared economic life.

Ireland needs a national retail survival and renewal plan. Without it, we will leave future generations with boarded-up streets, car-dependent shopping, fewer local employers, and towns stripped of their commercial purpose.

We cannot claim to value vibrant communities while allowing the businesses at the heart of those communities to disappear.

The time for reviews, reports, and sympathy has passed. We need action: Abolish punitive rates, fund local businesses, prioritise town-centre retail in planning, and make the survival of Ireland’s main streets a national economic priority.

Bobby O’Neill, Killeens, Wexford

Triple lock removal is devastating

The decision by Helen McEntee to remove the triple lock is of devastating significance for Irish people. Furthermore, the reason cited for this decision, namely that the UN mandate for the IRINI mission had lapsed is incorrect. Ireland should never have been involved in this mission, which is part of Fortress Europe, in the first place. While the mandate of the IRINI mission was to enforce an arms embargo on Libya, it actually operated to push fleeing migrants back to that country, where many were tortured and exploited. Furthermore, the armaments and weapons which were being smuggled largely came out of the EU/NATO attack on Libya in 2011 (which helped to overthrow the Libyan government and to kill Gaddafi). The amounts of the armaments crossing the Mediterranean to Libya is very small compared to the large amounts of these Libyan armaments and weapons, which are falling into the hands of militias and IS-type groups and causing havoc, not only in Libya but across Sub-Saharan Africa.

Our foreign policy must be based on humanitarian issues. We really need to ask why the humanitarian Operations Pontus and Sophia, which saved more than 15,000 drowning migrants, were cancelled and why Ireland and the EU have stopped rescuing drowning migrants in the Mediterranean.

Elizabeth Cullen, on behalf of Lex Innocentium, 21st Century, Naas, Co Kildare

Interests of the State must prevail

At some time in the near future, minister for foreign affairs and for defence, Helen McEntee, will seek Dáil approval for the Defence Amendment Bill 2006. This proposes to amend the clumsy and ill-conceived ‘triple lock’, preventing Ireland, as an independent national entity, from deploying more than 12 Defence Forces personnel abroad without a United Nations Security Council resolution. Given the composition and veto powers of the permanent members, no such resolution is probable.

Here in Ireland, there will be many objections to this proposal, coming from isolationist traditional parties that cannot see that “neutrality” does not equate to blind passivity.

The interests of the State should prevail. We are a modern, educated, and responsible liberal democracy and should continue as such, notwithstanding outdated cultural memories that can be be consigned to the past!

It is 2026, global economic and power dynamics have overtaken the memes of history.

Tim O’Connell Capt (ret’d), Ballinteer

Call for 1,000 more primary teachers

Dismal primary education figures — recently supplied to the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) by the Department of Education and Youth — show the impact of teacher shortages:

Exactly 419,823 Irish children (80%) are in classes above the EU average.

A total of 996 long-term teaching posts remained vacant in primary and special schools this year. A staggering 7,864 unqualified people were employed as substitute teachers.

As enrolment at primary level fell by 10,438 in the past three years, Government had ample opportunities to retain teaching posts and reduce class sizes at no extra exchequer cost. Instead, successive education ministers facilitated a cull of mainstream class posts.

In the past three years, primary schools lost 886 mainstream class teaching posts. It’s expected a further 498 posts will be lost this summer.

In schools where single classes had their own teachers, the loss of teaching posts has led to different age groups being combined into multi-classes. Schools have lost administrative principals and deputy principals as primary staffing has been neglected.

At least 75 small rural schools are under severe pressure for survival. Twelve have closed since 2023, and eight have amalgamated, with more closures announced this month.

It’s time to eliminate the disparity with the rest of Europe. Croatia and Latvia, for example, have 15 primary pupils to a class. Yet our Government has not fulfilled its commitment to reduce average class sizes from 23 to 19.

Smooth enactment of a redeveloped primary curriculum in the coming years will be a forlorn hope unless such staffing deficiencies are corrected.

It is time to heed the INTO’s call for 1,000 more primary teachers from Budget 2027.

John Boyle, INTO general secretary, Parnell Square, Dublin 1

Double standards over Israel

Isn’t it interesting that when some flares were thrown onto the pitch in a League of Ireland match in Dundalk earlier in the season, minister for sport Patrick O’Donovan was quick to wade in with both feet. He spewed a raft of threats and admonitions that if the FAI and the League didn’t bring in a range of draconian security measures, the Government would intervene and withdraw funding.

Yet on the issue of the Ireland V Israel football matches, Mr O’Donovan wants no part it. Now football in this country is for the FAI to deal with and there can be no political interference.

Mr O’Donovan should be required to explain his double standards to both the Dáil and the Irish people.

However the Government’s cowardice on this issue is just the latest in a list that includes Fifa, Uefa, and the FAI.

Heimir Hallgrímsson, Seamus Coleman, and the rest of the players have been left in an impossible position and I support them whatever decision they make and whatever the consequences of that decision.

Simon O’Connor, Limerick road, Ennis

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