Many businesses in Tipperary are reopening in some way today with the easing of Covid-19 restrictions.
All retail will fully reopen from next Monday.
John Butler runs The Bookworm bookshop on Liberty Square in Thurles and is also President of Thurles Chamber of Commerce.
While “clock & collect” resumes today John still can’t see why it wasn’t allowed during the most recent lockdown.
“I just don’t agree with it at all. We’ve done it safely all along and click & collect was probably the safest thing that we could do.”
“Possibly it was a city dictated thing where you would have large numbers possibly arriving at large shops to collect and that’s what they didn’t want. But in the case of towns like this and shops like ours if you had two people calling to click & collect at the same time that would be it and that would be perfectly safe.”
Nearly 370 hair and beauty salons are due to reopen in County Tipperary this week as part of the easing of Covid-19 restrictions.
Mary McGrath is co-owner and stylist at Clonmel based Get Your Locks Off – she says it’s great to be opening again but admits it’s been tough having to remain closed despite having complied with previous guidelines.
“Yeah, it’s a hard pill to swallow considering we had jumped through all the hoops and we did everything we were told.”
“But I suppose when the cases are going up and things are dangerous for people and people don’t feel safe or whatever I suppose we just follow the guidelines like everyone else.”
“It is hard – there’s a lot of loss of income after happening through every business. Not just us, all the industries are feeling a huge pinch.”
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