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Dublin’s retailers pick up the pieces after riot as footfall begins to recover

Increased Garda presence in city welcomed by traders but can’t solve fundamental, human issues

Trade unionists and demonstrators gather on O'Connell Street in Dublin to protest about the violence after rioting in the capital which followed a stabbing attack in late November. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA Wire

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Ian Curran
Fri Dec 15 2023 - 06:00

Dublin city centre traders say they are still recovering from the November 23rd riot that shut down the capital’s streets, leaving their customers and workers fearful and prompting a visible Garda response in the weeks that have followed. Yet retailers say the impact of the riot was deep but short-lived as customers have, in recent days, begun to return to more normal Christmas season rhythms.

Many say that while customers are making a conscious effort to get into town and show support for the city’s businesses and social life writ large, there is a profound sense that time and money has been lost. Others still point to long-standing social issues that they say have plagued the shopping and business areas around O’Connell Street.

“They took a massive knock,” says Jean McCabe, chief executive of Retail Excellence Ireland. “There’s a lot of lost ground for retailers to make up.”

While things are trending in the right direction again, city centre traders say the period immediately after the Dublin City Council-led clean-up operation was much quieter than normal. What that means for the bottom line will be different for individual businesses. Having, to some extent at least, lost out on Black Friday trading and at least a week of higher-volume Christmas time shopping, some businesses will be behind on their usual seasonal numbers.

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“The impact for us was for about a fortnight,” says Fergal Doyle, chief operating officer and co-owner of the Arboretum garden centre and lifestyle brand. Fergal and his brother Barry Doyle took the decision to open its Urban Green outlet on Parnell Street in the heart of Dublin 1 earlier this year. Aimed at city gardeners, the new venture is a partnership with Chapters Bookstore owners Kevin Neary and Michael Finucane, above whose store the new shop sits.

It was and remains a vote of confidence in a part of Dublin city that even before the riot had received its share of negative publicity – much of it off base if you talk to local residents and business owners – in the media in recent times.

Doyle says the riot hasn’t affected his family’s commitment to the area. “It hasn’t changed,” he said. “There are a lot of plans and a lot of activity in the area. And I suppose Kevin and Mick – our two business partners – they are north inner-city boys forever and a day. They are very confident. They’ve seen a lot of different things over the years that had an impact on the city – recessions; Covid-19; other riots – and we survived all those things, is Kevin’s point, and we’ll survive this too.”

However, Doyle said the impact of the riot on footfall was palpable for about a fortnight and only in recent days has the normal pre-Christmas pace resumed.

“It was just quiet,” he said. “Everyone was feeling it the same. There was an air of, ‘Oh my god!’ But to be honest with you, I think Dublin people and people like myself from outside Dublin, these people have come back into town to support us and others. It’s really evident there in the last week. It’s been great.”

“I think a lot of retailers in the city centre were kind of very cautious in the days after the riots,” says David O’Connor, group general manager at Louis Copeland & Sons, a stalwart north and south Dublin city business. “I think we were all very happy that it didn’t go into a second night because I think if that had happened, it would have been disastrous.”

While business has been “a little bit down on last year”, across the group’s Dublin city centre shops – maybe more so in the Capel Street shop, a short walk from the epicentre of the November 23rd riot – O’Connor says it has broadly returned to 2022 levels in the past 10 days. He says the group is hopeful that it will have largely shrugged off the impact of the violence when it draws up its final numbers for 2023.

“We had our best year on record across our group last year,” O’Connor says. “We’ve been in business for 90 years and that was the best year we ever had. This year, we’re going to finish on par with that. So I know people are giving out about the city but our shops are still the busiest they’ve ever been.”

Since November 23rd, city centre traders and their lobbyists have spoken with one voice about what they want to see from the Government, city council and law enforcement in response to the riot. Increased Garda visibility around O’Connell Street and elsewhere in the heart of the city is right at the top of the agenda. Anecdotally, this has been delivered upon in recent weeks.

O’Connor, Doyle and McCabe all agree it has been something of a balm for the anxiety felt by shoppers and retailers in the weeks since the riot. “I think the priority as I see has to be having the Garda presence visible in the city centre,” says O’Connor. “I think the gardaí have done a great job of making the city centre be seen as a safe environment since the riot.”

There are, however, longer term structural issues with which the city and its inhabitants have been grappling with, particularly in the wake of the pandemic, many of which have come to the fore over the past year or so. Antisocial behaviour, including public drug use and resourcing issues for homeless services, have all been highlighted by retailers in the months even before the riot and a quick canvass of traders in recent days reveals the depth of their concerns about these problems.

O’Connell Street and the north inner city, in particular, have been identified as problem areas, and there is a growing perception that it is not a safe place in which to trade and work.

“We need a zero tolerance approach to certain types of behaviour,” says McCabe. “That’s going to be a big test for the Government and local governments as well. We have a lot of reputation damage that we have to fix to change people’s perceptions.”

It would, however, be wrong to conflate those real, human issues with the riot, which was, as one retailer said this week something of a black swan event: an opportunistic flare-up, the flames of which were fanned by specific groups and individuals. Drug addiction, homelessness and other social issues are not just cosmetic problems of image or reputation or even of economics and increasing the Garda presence in the city centre can only do so much to solve them.

Certainly, there is an important role for the gardaí, says Tony Duffin, chief executive of the Ana Liffey Drug Project (ALDP), a national addiction service that works with addicts and also An Garda Síochána, which will often refer drug users to the service.

“It’s about partnership,” he says. “It’s about a law enforcement and public health approach to the problems of antisocial behaviour associated with addiction and mental health and other issues.”

Duffin says that Dublin does have quite a holistic approach to these issues already and that national plans, such as the health diversion programme contained in the National Drugs Strategy, “must come to fruition” to further alleviate the pressure on services. It will also help restore confidence in the city centre.

He says: “We know that the response to homelessness is providing homes for people. We know that addiction requires treatment and rehabilitation, effective treatment or rehabilitation and options for people. So, there are options, but of course we can do with more and we could do with other forms of treatment or rehabilitation.”

One thing that Dublin city centre needs urgently is supervised injection and safe drug use facilities, Duffin says. “Since 2017, we’ve had legislation to allow for supervised injection facilities and Dublin is going to be the pilot area. We know Merchant’s Quay will open up one next year to pilot the service but of course, once the pilot is over, I’m sure we will need other services.”

It would be unhelpful to lump the events of November 23rd in with these other, big picture societal issues that have been brought to bear on the capital’s streets, its traders and workers, Duffin says. “The riot was something none of us had experienced in our lifetime,” he says. “I think the State responded with a very strong Garda presence in the city centre and that is absolutely right. The other issues are completely separate issues.”

Whether or not you agree that Dublin is less safe than it was pre-Covid, Duffin says you cannot ignore what people are saying.

“I think you have to listen to people who work, live or visit the area, he says. “I think you also have to look at the statistics that the gardaí have, and what’s being said from their perspective in terms of the data, and I think there’s two things going on. One is there is definitely a perception that Dublin is unsafe. The data doesn’t stack up against that so there is an argument that it is not unsafe. So I think it’s just about listening to people. It’s about making sure that people feel safer and their perception of the city changes.”

That is the long view. In the short-term, city centre businesses and workers will be hoping the response from the State and community groups in recent weeks can buttress public confidence and footfall over the next 10 days and beyond.

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