FURNITURE RETAILER Garrett O’Hagan has closed his two remaining shops in Temple Bar, Haus and KitchenHaus, with the loss of 10 jobs. O’Hagan, who is a specialist in European designer furniture for homes and offices, said that trading conditions had become extremely difficult last September, and worsened in the new year with little prospect of a pick up in 2009.

“We are in a state as close to panic as it is possible to be,” said O’Hagan of the current retailing scene, with buyers unwilling to make big ticket purchases for their homes for fear of depleting their savings. “As long as that sensibility continues, the impact will be felt on small businesses everywhere,” he said. Last year he closed his original Haus furniture store on Crow Street in Temple Bar where he had traded since the mid 1990s. Outstanding orders for furniture and for Bulthaup kitchens will be fulfilled by another O’Hagan company, Project Office Limited, which is being run from a separate location in Temple Bar.

O’Hagan set up Project in 2000, and has carried out some high profile commercial fit-outs, like the new offices of solicitors McCann FitzGerald, Limerick and Cork county council offices and the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland’s offices in Dublin. He will continue to sell furniture through Project, notably classic chairs from Vitra, a German firm that makes furniture designed by Vernon Panton, Ray and Charles Eames, and others.