Death of the Irish shop

Sir, – Conor Pope's welcome narrative on the death of the Irish shop (Weekend Review, February 24th) raises a number of important issues.

Grant Thornton’s Bernard Doherty quite correctly points out that the State has never supported indigenous family businesses, apart from, quite begrudgingly, granting a VAT concession to the restaurant sector. The exit costs of business have been exponentially increased by the removal of tax relief on redundancy payments. The consequence of this is the slow and painful death of small unincorporated businesses as opposed to an orderly sale or wind-down of the enterprise.

Lorraine Higgins of Retail Excellence is correct in her assertion that Revenue does not have the tools necessary to impose and collect tax on sales emanating from outside the country. Equally, consumer legislation to protect consumers from such sales is not available to Irish consumers in this context.

Contrary to what DIT’s Dr Deirdre Duffy says, the offline experience is much more comfortable. If consumers have a problem, they can return to the point of sale. It is not that easy to get a satisfactory response from a so-called customer care centre domiciled outside of the EU. There is no substitute for knowing the client, or indeed, knowing the provider.

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The customer-contact experience and the human moment are issues that are noticeably absent from the online transaction. We must ramp up our patronage and support of small local businesses. This can only result in a positive contribution to the growth and sustainability of our towns and villages. – Yours, etc,

CORMAC MEEHAN,

Bundoran, Co Donegal.

Sir, – Conor Pope’s article on the death of the Irish shop was an interesting read, but it’s too easy to blame consumers for shopping online as the cause.

Shops, like banks, need to change their operating model and times to facilitate customers, not themselves. After all, they are in a service industry. – Yours, etc,

MARK CROWTHER,

Marino,

Dublin 3.