‘Government will have to help small businesses’

As manager of the busy Harbour Place Shopping Centre in Mullingar, Denis Hogan is seeing at first hand the impact of the soaring energy costs. He is also seeing at first hand how that is affecting the many small enterprises that operate in the centre.

It’s already been some time since the costs began creeping upwards: “We began to notice it about a year ago, but most severely in the last three, four months.”

At this stage, monthly bills for the centre are running about 140 per cent above what they would have been.

Going in to autumn and winter the centre will have to start cranking up the heat – which, naturally, will bring the double whammy of dearer heating fuel bills alongside the hiked electricity charges: “It’s a big concern,” says Denis. “It’s a big concern here for the mall because the shops obviously pay the service charge and they have to pay their rent as well. And they have to pay their own electricity as well, so there’s just another burden on top of them.”

Like all in business, he has been keeping a close eye on developments.

“The electricity seemed to spike first, but the oil price now has gone way up as well, so it is a big burden, a big concern.”

In terms of cutting costs, there is little wriggle room, Denis says, explaining that all the obvious cost saving measures that could be put in place have already been implemented. Lighting might seem like an obvious area, but they have tackled that already.

“We’re all LED anyway, so we’re already down to a quarter of our lighting electricity use. We also use electricity for heating as well as diesel. Yeah, so the lighting cost is down as low as it can. That’s just really the least of our concerns. After that there is no more wriggle room: going to LEDs is as far as you can go.”

Denis believes that there needs to be some intervention by government to help out the small businesses sector.

“They are going to have to help the smaller businesses.

“A lot of businesses just won’t be able to sustain it – and when they go bust, the knock-on effect ends up costing the government a lot more than whatever would have been required to keep them in business.”