Seventy jobs have been lost with the closure of a locally owned supermarket in Nenagh, Co Tipperary.
O’Connor’s Nenagh Shopping Centre Limited ceased operation today with the loss of 70 full-time and part-time jobs.
Spokesperson Rory O'Connor confirmed the family-owned store, which opened 36 years ago, ‘needed restructuring and refinancing’.
‘We had been looking at this for the past three months but we could not find investors to keep the business afloat,’ O’Connor said.
‘It's a very sad day for the staff - who have been here for a long time - and for customers arriving here this morning like they do every Thursday and Friday - it is very sad.’
Mr O'Connor was meeting customers as they arrived to the Shopping Centre to do their weekly shopping to inform they about the closure this morning.
‘They are very sad. They were good customers and have being coming here for a many, many years,’ he said.
Mr O'Connor said changes in the grocery market, whereby independent trade has fallen away, led to the difficulties that led to the closure of the Shopping Centre and the loss of jobs.
He said peoples' shopping habits in North Tipperary have changed.
‘More people are going to out of town developments and to shopping areas in Limerick,’ he said.
In recent years, traders in Nenagh have warned about ‘the heart being torn from the centre of Nenagh’ because of shopping multiples setting up on the outskirts of the town.
Other shops in the Nenagh Shopping Centre Complex remain open for business.
However, O'Connor's Shopping Centre Ltd owns the complex and has been the main anchor tenant for the past 36 years.
