A recovery task force for Dublin city centre to help businesses get back on their feet following the Covid-19 pandemic has been set up.
Among the measures announced by Dublin City Council are the promotion of outdoor trading and dining, more public conveniences and policing and safety.
According to a City Council statement, the initiative will be focussed on non-residential areas between the canals as far as Heuston Station to the West.
"The overall objective is to contribute to the recovery of the city centre by creating a roadmap for the delivery of the City Council's vision in line with the Government's plans for relaxing Covid restrictions and for reopening the economy," it stated.
The task force will have Coilín O'Reilly, Executive Manager North City, as its Director and will operate until the end of the year when its work will be reviewed.
Martin Harte, of the Temple Bar Company, welcomed the setting of of the new taskforce.
Mr Harte said that city businesses are facing the biggest crisis since the aftermath of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings in the 1970s.
He said business groups have been pushing for the task force for some time.
DublinTown also said that many city-based businesses are financially fragile and vulnerable and a key task is to ensure that they survive into the post pandemic period.
"To be successful the interventions require structured private sector inputs from property owners, investors, and business practitioners.
"The business community's expertise and customer understanding is available to Dublin City Council and must be harnessed constructively," DublinTown said in a statement.
DublinTown also noted that there has been some talk of a flight from the city centre, with some expecting that current enforced behaviour patterns will become the norm.
"However, such analysis ignores the obvious fact that people are reacting to most unusual circumstances and restrictions.
"Almost universally people are expressing their unhappiness with their current lives and expressing the desire to get back to a level of previous normality," the group said.
"There is a reason why cities have grown exponentially in recent decades and history teaches that catalyst events such as Covid strengthen and accelerate trends that were evident before the event took place," it said.
"We can anticipate, with confidence, that Dublin city will return to increased strength where the appropriate interventions are made. However, it is equally true that failure to act appropriately could lead to decades of decline," it added.
