Kinsale on the comeback trail

TUESDAY, December 1st, was hopefully the start of commercial recovery in Kinsale as the closed shops sprang to life to welcome back the customers who have been suffering from retail deprivation.

There was no overcrowding as customers queued in an orderly fashion complete with masks, but the sight of the closed and shuttered so-called wet pubs was a reminder that some businesses still suffer and don’t seem to have any relief in sight. Still, the happy faces and hairstyles of those who managed to get an early date with the hairdresser helped to cheer up the town.

From this Friday, people will be able to wine and dine (or just have a chat!) in the local restaurants and gastro pubs in the run-in to Christmas.

The Chamber of Tourism and Business (COTB), chaired by Guny Patel, is making a special appeal to people to shop locally as far as possible and is also mounting a campaign to try to attract residents of Cork City and the county as a whole to come to Kinsale where the shopping is easy and safe!

The Chamber has decided that half of the prize money won in the Bank of Ireland National competition will be spent on promoting the town in 2021 and half used to fund projects of benefit of the town.

The Kinsale success at the Bank of Ireland Enterprise Towns Awards and being crowned ‘Ireland’s Most Enterprising Town’ for the first time resulted in winning €50,000 in prize money, the Kinsale COTB, which made the application and subsequent presentations, has decided to allocate the prize money as follows: €25.000 will be allocated to projects promoted by  the community groups who assisted in the Enterprise Town’s application process in recent years. The remaining €25,000 will be allocated to the 2021 Kinsale Comeback Campaign to generate economic activity in the town and assist the town’s recovery post-Covid.

Anyone who is involved in one of these Community Groups or organisation in the town may  have a project that they would like to propose. COTB can  help make that happen with assistance from the Enterprise Town’s award fund.

Organisations are asked to let COTB have an outline of the project, the desired outcome, the benefit to the town, the estimated budget and requested amount from the fund. Proposals are to be sent to [email protected] before Friday, December 18th, 2020 and decisions will be announced by January 31st, 2021.

For information on the Kinsale Comeback Campaign, go to www.kinsale.ie news section and see the Strategy Document which details in full each stage of the campaign and also the results to date.