BACK TO BUSINESS
FROM Ballybunion to Dingle, the communities of the West and North Kerry coast serve as great examples of towns returning to some semblance of normality as phase three of the exit from lockdown comes into effect.
Massively dependant on tourism, they have been hit hard by the pandemic – despite not presenting a single case of the infection to date in the case of Ballybunion.
But the hardy business people of the North Kerry resort are coming out of lockdown fighting, with hair salons, cafés, pubs, ice cream parlours and more finally reopening – subject to the continuing restrictions. It’s all going down on a hugely positive and responsible note in ‘BallyB’, just as the ‘summer locals’ start returning with the reopening of the resort’s many caravan parks amid hopes of a bounce from the domestic market, if not the overseas market, for the remainder of the season.
Sundae’s Ice Cream Parlour reopened on Monday to a great response, albeit strictly on a takeaway basis, with their mouth-watering dairy confections served through a hatch. Ever before the ice cream started to flow at Sundae’s, the business had long been on the front-line fight against COVID, owner Joanna McCarthy explained.
“My husband Kevin has 3D prints, and we’ve been printing face shields all along, donating them to front-line emergency services like the ambulance and even supplying ICU in New
York. We’ve donated up to 700 shields already, and now we’re donating them to our fellow businesses here in an effort to help Ballybunion get back up and running. It’s all for the community really as it has been incredible to see how Ballybunion came together through all of this.”
Joanna is also a partner in an ice-cream business in North Carolina called Celtic Creamery. “It’s going very successfully. TheY never really locked down over there, but it was 100 per cent the right decision here I feel.”
Over in The Chop Shop Barber’s in the SuperValu car park, and owner Darragh Sheehy and colleague Darragh Leahy are waging a masked-up war against some of the shaggiest male manes on the western seaboard since the 1970s.
“We just opened in August, so I had been looking forward to what I had hoped would have been the first big summer trade. But we’re back into the swing of it now at least,” Darragh Sheehy told The Kerryman.
“We’re taking customers two at a time in appointments, and it takes a bit more time with all the cleaning that’s required, but it’s going well so far. Mind you, with a lot of fellas after a few months of lock-down, we’re forced to do the equivalent of about two cuts, by the time you get it chopped back to where you can start really working on it!” Darragh laughed.
“We’re feeling positive now and just hope we never have to go through another lock-down.”