‘This is like Armageddon for businesses’ – Merchants of Ennis under siege from streets revamp

But there are no such jigs as dusk settles on a chilly mid-January afternoon in Munster’s largest town. Abbey Street, O’Connell Street and Parnell Street are completely closed to traffic, as construction begins on public realm regeneration works that are not due to finish until late 2025. The last few remaining shoppers, whose budgets are stretched by a cost-of-living crisis and a two-week wait until their first post-Christmas payday, meander back to the car parks.

“This is like Armageddon” for businesses, says John O’Connor, chair of Retailers of Ennis, as customers line up to his counter at Custy’s Traditional Music Shop off O’Connell Street to buy new fiddle and guitar strings. “There’s so much difficulty with making a living now. Rates are high, rents are big and costs are too high. There will be serious attrition by the time this is over.”

Like towns and cities across Europe, the streets of Ennis are being repurposed for a post-Covid world. The ��11.5m upgrade to the streetscape will lead to a bigger plaza with seating and planting at High Street, O’Connell Street and O’Connell Square (colloquially known as The Height) to attract pedestrians, according to Clare County Council. Barrack Square and Old Barrack Street will be developed as a café quarter to encourage people to meet, relax and shop.

The town will benefit in the long term but in the short-term, businesses will suffer.

However, some traders fear more retailers will have folded by the time the work is finished because street closures will divert shoppers up the M18 motorway to Limerick shopping centres such as the Crescent. That’s because retailers struggling to recover from Covid-19 restrictions are also dealing with increased business costs, from high energy bills to hikes in the minimum wage and paid sick leave.

“Every week there’s something else,” said Maeve Culligan from the County Boutique, which was set up by her mother in 1966. “There’s electricity costs and then you have Brexit, with more costs for shipping. Online is a lot more expensive to operate now.”

Culligan said hoarding for construction appeared just outside her O’Connell Street boutique in early January.

“It will be up for nine months,” she said. “We buy stock between six and nine months in advance, so not having notice that our street is closing will have an impact. The town will benefit in the long term but in the short-term, businesses will suffer. This is a county town: our customers are very reliant on driving into the town and we don’t have enough planned parking.”

A reduction in footfall due to a perceived shortage of parking is the biggest worry for Martin Casey, whose century-old family business, MF Casey, has been selling school and office supplies behind the Daniel O’Connell monument at The Height since 1945. He worries that the public realm works will lead to the reintroduction of the pedestrianisation measures that came into effect during the pandemic to allow for social distancing, something the council has denied.

“Our streets have been closed intermittently since Covid and now we’re faced with a situation where (O’Connell Street) is going to be closed for at least 12 months,” he said. “The intermittent closure was ongoing up until the end of October. Within two days of the street reopening fully, the ‘Ennis buzz’ was back. You could feel the vibrancy. More people came into town and anti-social behaviour went down.

In an Irish provincial town, you need car parking spaces

“People can’t come in now because we don’t have adequate parking. In an Irish provincial town, you need car parking spaces. It mightn’t be environmentally popular but that’s the reality. Parking is what contributes to the success of the out-of-town developments: people can drive their car and can walk into a shopping centre in 30 seconds.

“The reality of doing business in a market town means you have to be able to get dropped off in the town centre or park your car in the town centre. There are elderly people who get dropped off because they want to go to the bank, the post office, or attend appointments, and that’s all disregarded. Some of us are branded as troglodytes but there’s no business in Ennis that would be opposed to something if it’d maintain their level of business. But we’re not seeing the evidence of that.”

We can’t compete on convenience but we can on the experience

A 2016 study of 100 cities showed that increased footfall on pedestrian-only streets led to a 49pc jump in retail sales.

“More parking just attracts more traffic,” said Síle Ginnane from Better Ennis, a community group that sat on a Covid mobility taskforce. She believes the town’s public realm works should re-pedestrianise the streets and points out that Transport for Ireland’s Local Link service, which has quietly introduced new bus services to Ennis for as little as €1, must be better promoted to encourage shoppers to ditch their car.

“Ennis is a very unique town but the problems we’re facing are not unique,” she said. “We need to get people back living and working in town centres to tackle the vacancy issue. People are buying online but we want to make Ennis a destination. We can’t compete on convenience but we can on the experience, which is the quality and design of the street and the feeling of a place.”