Sir, – Business group Dublin Can Be Heaven bemoans that Dublin is now "hostile" toward older, wealthier people who live in the suburbs and like to drive into the city centre to shop in small independent retailers ("Wealthy shoppers deterred from Dublin city, says business group", News, August 9th). It has taken to your pages to highlight its grievances, presumably because it thinks it will have an effect on public policy that will benefit their businesses.
On the contrary, as far as I can see, this article is a PR disaster for Dublin Can Be Heaven and its member businesses.
Like many younger, perhaps less “well-heeled” citizens of Dublin, I much prefer to shop at independent retailers and love that our city has so many of them. But if the 70 businesses that make up Dublin Can Be Heaven are going to adopt such regressive attitudes towards the protection of our public realm, I will take my custom elsewhere.
If there is one group in society that has had their whims catered to for decades in this country, it is older, wealthier people who live in suburban Dublin and drive cars.
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If they “don’t want to take crummy buses with bottles and cans rolling down the aisles” then I suggest they use their disproportionate political clout to lobby for improved public transport.
God knows they can still get their way, as we saw with the debacle over Dublin City Council’s temerity to try make one of the most beautiful parts of the city, Sandymount Strand, safe to cycle on.
If the idea of setting foot on a bus or Luas is simply too upsetting, why don’t wealthy shoppers support another set of small, independent Irish businesses that have been devastated by the pandemic – taxis? Surely the “better-heeled customer . . . who wants to buy more than a coffee” can afford the minimal additional cost above that of paying to park their own car in the city centre anyway? Dublin Can Be Heaven would be better off organising discounts on taxi fares for their customers than lobbying for free parking spaces for private cars.
As for those travelling from outside Dublin to shop, there are seven Luas Park & Ride facilities across suburban Dublin, many located beside motorway junctions. The fact that (some) “rural people [are] very used to being able to park straight outside a shop” is completely meaningless in this context. Surely the business owners quoted in your article are not suggesting that drivers should be able to just pull in outside the Powerscourt Centre?
Not to mention the supreme irony of this article appearing on the same day as climate scientists issue a "code red for humanity" as "Major climate changes now inevitable and irreversible, stark UN report says" (News, August 9th). – Yours, etc,
ALAN EUSTACE,
Marino,
Dublin 9.
A chara, – Climate crisis confirmed. Meanwhile, some retailers are against pedestrianisation. When will it sink in that our preferences have global consequences and that change is not a choice anymore but a necessity? – Is mise,
ÉILÍS NÍ ANLUAIN,
Bré,
Co Chill Mhanntáin.