‘No easy fix’ for council as vape shops dominate ‘dying’ Waterford high streets

There is “no easy fix” to the problems facing retail across Waterford city and county, a council meeting has heard.

Independent councillor Joe O’Riordan raised the concerns of retailers for the third consecutive month at the November plenary meeting of Waterford City and County Council.

Cllr O’Riordan said that he attended a meeting of retailers in the city a number of months ago and asked if there was any update on the outcome of that meeting.

He continued: “It seems that the major areas of growth in retail in our town centres are nail bars and vape / mobile phone repair shops.

"This constitutes a race to the bottom for retail space on our high streets. A radical look I think is needed at the retail sector in our city and towns and the factors within our control which inhibit or indeed accentuate economic growth in our retail sector.”

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Cllr O’Riordan called for a forum to be established which would allow retailers to raise their concerns with the council.

He said that retail can compete with online shopping if it is given the support of the local authority.

He concluded by saying that the alternative is to sit back and watch the decline in quality of retail outlets, which is “leading to the death of our high streets”.

In response to Cllr O’Riordan, Director of Services Michael Quinn said that “retail is facing significant challenges across the board” and that is "in no way unique to Waterford”.

He continued: “In terms of the engagement we had with the retailers - they had that event.

“We have engagement ongoing with them in relation to addressing some of the concerns they have. I’m not aware of any specific direct outcomes out of that but we are engaging.”

Mr Quinn went on to outline what the council has done to try and develop urban centres across the county.

“We have the cleanest city, so our environment department are doing their job. Our festival and events programme is hugely extensive, particularly in the city.

“A fit-out grant and a shop-front improvement scheme available. There’s a Shop Local programme which we run and we put a significant amount of money in terms of encouraging people to shop local.”

He mentioned how the council supports the local chambers and the Purple Flag initiative. However, he insisted that there was only so much the local authority can do.

“When it comes to retail, it is a much more complicated problem because you’re faced with the fact we don’t have retail property available and we don’t want to go into competition with existing retailers or landlords in the city centre.

“Attracting in retailers is very challenging. We had a number of initiatives over the last few years and got absolutely no response to those in terms of engaging with retailers.”

In that regard, Mr Quinn gave the example of the City Square and George’s Court shopping centres, who both have “significant challenges in filling their properties”.

“So this is not an easy problem. We will work with anybody who comes forward with a half decent idea that we can assist with to address the problems in the city centre and town centres in support of retail.”

“But there is no easy fix here and we are certainly not the only ones that can enable the solution,” he concluded.