Casual trading by-laws will be introduced to Ballinrobe in the near future to try to curb the unregulated on-street trading that is currently happening in the town.
“We currently have the situation where we don’t have casual trading laws in the town and anyone can come into town and set up down the street from some other business who has to pay rent and rates and sell the same thing as the rate payer for less,” Cllr Michael Burke told a meeting of the Claremorris electoral area committee this week. “I’d like to see regulation on this, maybe have a designated area for casual trading, so that we can have a bit of fairness for the rate payer.”
Cllr Patsy O’Brien was fully supportive of the proposal. “I’m fully backing this, the small businesses are suffering and this needs to be addressed, a designated area is needed to stop people just trading where the like,” Cllr O’Brien said.
Padraig Flanagan, senior executive officer, said: “We have draft by-laws drawn up similar to those that are in operation in Claremorris and included in that is a designated trading area, and we will be looking for your submissions on them, and then they will be put on public display before being adopted.”
