EDITORIAL: It is past time to help small businesses in Tipperary

This week saw the closure of yet another Tipperary business.

The owners of Dé Róiste’s Bar and Restaurant in Ballinderry posted on social media that they would close shortly and that the decision was a financial one.

And they are not the first.

Reports of businesses closing are regularly reported in the pages of the Tipperary Star and The Nationalist as well as on tipperarylive.ie.

The challenges listed by business owners include the VAT rate, cost of materials, utilities and rent.

Difficulty finding and keeping staff and nobody to take over after retirement are all factors that regularly come up.

It is well past time to help small businesses.

While there is a perfectly good argument to be made, that if a business cannot support itself, perhaps it should not be open.

But, there do seem to be many businesses suddenly becoming non-viable.

It doesn’t seem to matter where you go, there are notices in windows or on social media up and down the county of businesses closing.

One can imagine this is replicated in towns and villages across the country.

It is clear that there are outside forces creating challenges for small businesses, and those problems need to be mitigated.

The solutions are already out there, especially in the hospitality sector, who have for several years been very vocal about what they need.

But it doesn’t look like help is coming.

Closures are not just about the lost businesses. A closed shop can leave a building vacant for years. Taxes and other rates can’t be collected, which means lost income for the local economy. And it means fewer services in the community.

The Government is quite capable of going to bat for big tech.

Why not small businesses?