Council disappointed with feedback from Kilkenny city traders

There’s been a “disappointing” lack of feedback from local business owners on the one way system in Kilkenny City.

That’s according to Tim Butler, the Director of Services with Kilkenny County Council.

113 traders participated in the local authority’s survey on the temporary system, but the vast majority of responses came from a small cluster.

36% of the replies came from businesses on High Street, while 33% were from John’s Street. Tim Butler says they had hoped for a wider spread of responses.

It’s believed that many businesses further afield may have instead responded to a similar survey by Kilkenny Chamber of Commerce, which had been carried out shortly beforehand, and which garnered 192 responses.

But Mayor of Kilkenny John Coonan says he was surprised by the low level of engagement from other city traders in this instance:

“I’m a little bit bemused that we didn’t have a better response, but these are the people who were probably engaged more at the beginning and were afraid in the beginning as well. And in fairness to some of them, these are the people that were seriously affected at the beginning, they were all closed. I suppose what we would have to keep in mind is that we still have Covid with us. So an analysis of any positive or negative effect of the social distancing conditions that were brought in by Ian Gardner and his team, to get a response to that in these circumstances, mightn’t be a true reflection.”

Meanwhile, of the few local traders that did participate in the Council’s survey, only a small number of them felt that the one-way system had been good for business. 57% of the businesses surveyed disagreed or strongly disagreed that it had brought more shoppers into the city.