Crushrod traders make road appeal to council:
A NUMBER of local retailers in Crushroad Avenue have revealed their businesses have been hugely affected since repair works started on Harty’s Cottage, with traffic unable to access the area from the main road.
Cathal and Deirdre McElearney, who own Londis supermarket on Crushrod Avenue, believe their business is down by as much as 25%.
‘Our business is definitely down, we’re not getting any traffic from the main road you can’t turn down by Harty’s Cottage where they are doing the so anyone trying to get in from the main road isn’t bothering to go the long way around, they are just passing us by,’ said Deirdre.
‘At this time of the year we are stocked up to the hilt for Christmas, it’s our busiest four weeks of the year but as soon as the work started we noticed that business was down. The first day the road was closed we were done 25% in our takings and that was just the first day.’
Deirdre said the couple were dismayed to see the work starting in December when it could have been delayed until the new year.
‘ There was no consultation, we didn’t know it was starting,’ she said. ‘ The day it started we rang them and they said there was a notice in the paper but we hadn’t seen it. We would like them to reverse the one way system on the road to allow traffic to come down to Crushrod Avenue from the main road.
‘We’ve just finished a big renovation here and obviously that cost us a lot so this would have been the start of building up our custom again. We have a great loyal customer base and we’re very grateful that they keep supporting us but overall it has affected our business hugely.’
Fiona Herlihy from Herlihy’s Chemist said her business has also been hugely affected by the works and the partial closure of the road.
‘It’s affecting us bigtime and we’re not impressed,’ said Fiona. ‘We are down 2025% across the board. It’s such a bad time of year to do it, we only found out at 4pm the day before when a note was thrown into the shop.
‘We’d like to see the one way system reversed, that makes more sense especially for us because most of our customers would come from the hospital or the local area.’
She said that both the council’s local engineer and some local councillors had been very helpful and had tried to resolve the issue but said the construction firm would not change the one way system that’s now in place.
‘It couldn’t happen at a worse time of year, it’s just ridiculous,’ said Fiona.
Mary Cudden from The Laundry Shop said she has also had ‘a very quiet week’ after the works started. ‘It is putting people off,’ she said. ‘ They’ll just keep going when they can’t get down the road. We all want to see the one way system reversed, 100% that’s what needs to happen.’