ENNIS Town Council voted Monday to suspend its trial of pedestrianisation of two streets for a time on Saturdays after a heated meeting which was attended by traders in the town.
The public gallery of the council’s monthly meeting was packed with traders who heard Cllr Johnny Flynn (FG) had conducted a survey of businesses affected by the last six weeks of pedestrianisation.
The councilor told the meeting that 75 per cent of businesses which replied to his survey are down on turnover and 65 per cent of those had lost 30 per cent or more on their till receipts.
Almost half of the traders have been forced to shed staff hours, in some cases letting their Saturday staff go, he said.
Many business owners shut up shop to be at the meeting and to make a presentation to the town council members before the monthly agenda was taken up.
Cllr Flynn said that traders had co-operated and supported pedestrianisation but it “just hasn’t worked. We are first and foremost a commercial town, not a civic area,” he told the meeting, proposing a motion that the town council suspend the Saturday pedestrianisation experiment in Abbey Street and O’Connell Street.
His motion was supported by Labour Cllr Paul O’Shea, who said that at a time when unemployment was higher than ever “we cannot afford to allow this to continue if Ennis is losing trade and losing jobs”.
Cllr Brian Meaney (GP) said that he still supports the trial and said that he was concerned that the council’s own staff might not have the right experience to assess the trial and analyse the results.
“This was to be done on a professional basis…we need to come to an informed decision based on information from independent qualified outside consultants.”
Mayor of Ennis Tommy Brennan (Ind) proposed a counter motion that the trial be allowed to continue for the agreed eight weeks. “We said we would give it an eight week trial and I think we should go along with that.”
He said he agreed with Cllr Meaney that a private assessor needs to be brought in. “We need to look at this and if it needs tweaking with signage or whatever then let’s do that, but we said we would have an eight week assesment and I think we should go along with that.”
Town manager Ger Dollard said that the council’s own footfall survey “showed that quite clearly there are people on the street. We’ve had six pedestrianised days to date and on three of those there were festivals.”
There was a cheer from the traders when members voted six to three in favour of Cllr Flynn’s motion to suspend the pedestrianisation.
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