Kieran’s Speech/ Comments

Council Chamber, 9 November 2009

Lord Mayor, this year the city commemorates 25 years since the closure of two of Cork’s biggest employers, Fords and Dunlops. 25 years later through rebuilding, boom and bust, we’re back to the high unemployment figure.

On page 5 – the graph reads 26, 532 in metropolitan Cork on the live register, three times the amount of unemployment since 2006 – I call on the Council to focus on that figure. I would like to hear what the Council is doing to provide opportunities to unemployed people.

On page 9 is the rent problems, the national average says that rents are down 18.7 % this year- My second concern is the 600 businesses in the city and making sure they survive this recession. I have major concerns that if rates are pushed higher, we’ll push traders out of the city to the privately owned shopping centres. According to the report, we have 15% vacant office space in the city centre.

I would also like to hear what are the Council’s approaches to dealing with rates and rents of our 600 businesses that are now struggling to make ends meet.