*Senator Roisin Garvey. Photograph: Eamon Ward
A Clare member of the Oireachtas has stressed the significance of the Banner public spending locally this festive season.
At a Joint Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment debate last month, Senator Roisin Garvey (GP) highlighted the need for a PR strategy promoting residents across the country to shop Irish and detailed the need for available supports for small business to be flagged in a concise manner.
Speaking to The Clare Echo, Senator Garvey urged people within the county to consider the benefits of spending locally when purchasing their Christmas presents and referenced Click for Clare as an ideal directory to allow them to do so.
“Consumers have to realise the amount of power they have with the money they spend and where they spend it. If there was ever a time to buy local, it is now. Christmas shopping has already started so we need to spend our money on local businesses. Clare craft workers and small businesses have so much to offer, it is endless the different things people are doing it is so creative, you are not stuck for ideas if you go onto Click for Clare”.
She continued, “I want to call on everybody in Clare to really think about where they are spending their money and even if they only divert a fiver or a tenner more a week towards supporting local businesses it would make a huge difference and it would prevent job losses. I have been working on promote Buy Irish in the Seanad and I instigated a Lean on Me campaign which enabled shops which didn’t have websites to have a buying online option which was very successful. Click for Clare is a great idea and we should all strongly support it”.
Inspiration for consumers can be found on Click for Clare via The Clare Echo’s website, the Inagh woman stated. “If people want to support local, they can go onto Click for Clare and see where they spend their money before they go buying Christmas presents and they might be inspired by everything that Clare businesses are offering, it’s not always easy to know what to buy for whom but if you go onto Click for Clare you will be inspired by a business up the road from you that you might not know about”.
Shopping online with big brands may be convenient but it will not support the local economy, Roisin affirmed. “With the 5km restrictions, before we click on Amazon or any of the big guys who don’t put any money in any pockets here, you’re sending all your money out of the country, you want to focus on a circular economy where you are keeping all your money in Clare so we support our businesses and business owners who work very hard. We all know how hard self-employed people work and small business owners work to keep their jobs going for their employees, 70 percent of all the jobs in Clare are SMEs and they are the 70 percent of jobs we can influence holding onto. It is a very difficult time because of COVID now and Brexit coming down the road so we really need to support our own”.
