{"id":121992,"date":"2025-10-14T18:57:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T18:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/121992\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T18:57:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T18:57:08","slug":"drogheda-dunnes-stores-to-close-after-50-years-in-business-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/121992\/","title":{"rendered":"Drogheda Dunnes Stores to close after 50 years in business \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">Staff at a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/dunnes-stores\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/dunnes-stores\">Dunnes Stores<\/a> grocery store have been left reeling with the unexpected news that the outlet is to close on October 31st.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">It is understood that 27 staff are to be affected when the store on West Street in Drogheda, Co. Louth shuts its doors for the last time in over 50 years on the main thoroughfare.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The grocery is one of Dunnes Stores\u2019 earliest outlets and its founder Ben Dunne had a close association with the town when he described his apprenticeship as a draper in Drogheda in 1926 as a \u2018turning point\u2019 in his life.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Most of the staff at the store have up to 20 years service and were said to be \u2018shocked and disappointed\u2019 with the news which was relayed to them by management on Monday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">It is believed that staff have been told they could be redeployed to nearby stores at the town\u2019s Scotch Hall and Colpe Cross shopping centres but they have had no further confirmation of this.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Employees say they are upset that a meeting was not called to break the news and answer any questions they may have.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">It is understood that a meeting by union Mandate is being organised.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Meanwhile the store\u2019s impending closure was described as \u2018another blow to the town centre\u2019.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Although Drogheda was recently included in the Living City Initiative, which provides tax incentives to bring vacant or underused buildings back to life, it\u2019s \u2018ten years too late\u2019, according to spokesperson for the Drogheda Vacancy and Dereliction Group Dom Gradwell.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cIf we had this years ago, there would be more people living in the town centre, more footfall and more businesses,\u201d he said<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cDunnes Stores has been in West Street all my life and now it is another destination store gone, after we lost M&amp;S last year. It\u2019s death by a thousand cuts to the town centre.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Dunnes did not respond to a request for comment. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Staff at a Dunnes Stores grocery store have been left reeling with the unexpected news that the outlet&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121993,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,13415,19264,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-121992","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-drogheda","11":"tag-dunnes-stores","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-featured-news","14":"tag-featurednews","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}