Update On DublinTown Actions Since Nov 23rd

Dear Member,

We would like to update you all on a couple of items:

As you will know, the DublinTown team has been working around the clock on your behalf since the disgraceful scenes we witnessed last Thursday evening. On Friday of the following day, our CEO Richard Guiney spoke by phone with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, on Saturday Richard and some businesses from the O’Connell Street and Henry Street area met in the DublinTown office with Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe and Dublin City Councillor Ray McAdam. Later on Saturday Richard spoke with Minister for Enterprise, Trade & Employment Simon Coveney. Yesterday (Monday) Richard spoke with Minister for Justice Helen McEntee and attended a Joint Policing Committee meeting with Garda Commissioner Drew Harris. Richard has conveyed to all about how these events have affected city centre businesses, the city’s reputation and what action is required to happen now to safe guard the future of the city.

Separate to this, we have attended multiple meetings since Friday with Dublin City Council on what we can do together. There are medium and long term issues that the city faces that need to be addressed – and plans are being drawn up to address them – but in the very short term (that is, the next four weeks) we need to rebuild the public’s confidence in visiting the city centre. We need customers and indeed our own staff to feel assured that what happened last week cannot happen again. We need assurances that the high level of policing that is currently in place will remain through the important Christmas period. And we need family friendly activations and events on street that will be both a hook to get people in and a positive experience for them while they shop and socialise in the city.

On top of all this, we need a far and wide reaching advertising campaign for the city centre. We are pleased to share that all of this will happen and DublinTown – on your behalf – will play a central role in delivering it.

We are currently working with Dublin City Council, Fáilte Ireland and other agencies to bring this short term marketing plan to fruition quickly while the plan to address the medium and long term issues facing the city is formulated. We will have more details on this Christmas marketing plan shortly – but you can expect to see some activity this weekend and bigger planned activity from Friday 8th of December on through to early January.

There is a concerted effort and a huge amount happening. You can be assured that we are working hard on behalf of our business community to regain the confidence of customers. We will give you further updates as we have them but please do email us with any concerns or indeed any suggestions you may have to better promote the city.

Kind Regards,
Your DublinTown team.