Mr. Noel Dunne:

What happened was not a surprise to me. What we are most concerned about is the aftermath of it. As the Deputy rightly said, we have always had a certain element of our non-Irish staff being racially abused as they try to stop somebody going out of the shop with product. That has always been the case and it is more so in recent times. What was more worrying for me was the aftermath of the horrible events. We had four staff who were afraid to come into work the next day. Those events were on a Thursday. On Friday, Saturday and Sunday we were very badly staffed. Obviously, we were very quiet as well because there was nobody in the city centre for Black Friday which should have been one of our busiest weekends here. Our trade was down by 50% as was everybody else's. More concerning was the staff and their welfare. They did not come into work. Since then, they have had that air of looking over their shoulder.

We have had no real issue recently, in the last year or so. We have always had a problem with getting people to work in the city centre. Ironically in the last year we have been very lucky in getting people to work. As I said earlier, while the Deputy was out, we have a lot of non-Irish staff who are students and live in the area and go to school in the area. They are afraid to come into work not only after that incident but just being in a store where people are coming in robbing. They are afraid if they talk to somebody or say something to them that the racial card will be played and it is extremely difficult. It is not so much us employing staff, but staff retention is a major issue.