‘Huge’ appetite for setting up business forum in Athy

THERE is a “huge” appetite for a group or forum for businesses in Athy. An exploratory meeting held in O’Briens last Tuesday evening (23 July) was attended by a number of local businesspeople alongside councillor Brian Dooley. 

A number of ideas and concerns were floated at the meeting, including a canopy for the forthcoming redeveloped Emily Square (given the inclement Irish weather), promoting the town on social media, dereliction, parking, crime, and the struggle to get skilled staff.

Speaking afterwards, cllr Dooley told the Kildare Nationalist that the purpose of the meeting was to “bring as many of the businesses in the town together to give them a platform to have, I suppose, a singular voice, that they can have an opinion about various different issues in the town... it might be the rates, it might be the pay parking, it might be support with grants for [the] shopfront scheme… crime has come up. It might be various different things like that,” he said.

“I grew up in the town, my mother had a salon and at the time every business in the town lived upstairs, and even back in the eighties when we were going through what was a continuous recession with massive unemployment, all those businesses were vibrant, people maintained their business, there was no real vacancy or dereliction and stuff like that,” Brian explained.

“Now, we seem to be faced with dereliction and vacancy which is an issue and we will get a handle on it. But when I see the amount of money that's being spent in the town in trying to improve the town, improve the streetscape, with the Shackleton (Museum), the Blueway, Emily Square, Model School, all this money that's coming into the town, and the new road, I think the next step for us now is to give the support to the businesses and that's where I'm coming from.

“It's purely to get out there and be a voice – along with all councillors by the way, this isn't the Brian Dooley show, this is very much all the elected officials getting together behind the businesses and giving them the support that they need to try and improve their footfall and to make it easier on them opening their doors every morning.” 

He added: “I bring people in from all over, the UK, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Europe and America, I bring them to the town of Athy, the town I love, and they are blown away by the hospitality of the people, the friendliness, they love it. So I suppose for us it's to try and give the businesses the foot up now and the support they need and we'll drive it on.”