Buncrana business meeting could lead to candidates running in elections

A meeting in Buncrana next week could lead to candidates running in the next local elections to represent the interests of businesses in the town.

The purpose of the Buncrana Business Together meeting is to assess the appetite for the formation of a group in the town “to work together, for the benefit of all”.

The meeting, which is being organised by local businessman Paul Brogan, has been planned for a number of months.

Mr Brogan, who led opposition from businesses over proposed changes to the town's parking scheme two years ago, said the meeting has the backing of dozens of businesses and is aimed at establishing the appetite for setting up a group to “inform, to challenge and to work together, for the benefit of all in Buncrana”.

The owner of Food For Thought on the town’s Main Street said the meeting, which is taking place in the Inishowen Gateway Hotel on September 18 at 8pm, could lead to the formation of an organisation that “eventually might be called a chamber of commerce”.

“The reason I am not calling this a chamber of commerce is because there is an old chamber of commerce that is still out there and until such time as they say we could use their name, I am not assuming that they are completely dead,” he said.

“If they appear out of the ashes and we go together, that’s great, if not, we go it alone.”
He believes there are at least 80 businesses in the town that would be interested in the formation of such a group, after more than 100 put their names to a petition opposing proposed changes to town centre parking in 2023.

“You could easily get 80 businesses involved in this and 80 businesses means you then have a mandate that the councillors initially have to listen to; and then that can go back to the council.”

If a group is formed, he hopes it would lead to the running of candidates at the next local elections.

“It could be possible that if we get a good working group, that the group could support a couple of people to run in the next election, (so) that the business people have people sitting on the council.

“That is my aspiration - to be in a position to run one or two people to represent the businesses at the next election in three and a half years time.”

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He said candidates would be run if “the group has the membership and has the wherewithal to pay for this”.

Mr Brogan said the meeting could initially lead to the formation of a WhatsApp group to keep businesses “working together and helping each other”. “It would be a working group for the members of the group.”

To date, the meeting has the “active support” of more than 40 businesses, he said, through signatures and expressions of support.

“This would have started in June when the bins weren’t emptied on the Main Street, and I went out looking for signatures to say: ‘Why do we pay rates?’”

He said the situation in Buncrana for businesses has deteriorated since the loss of the town council in 2014.

“When you had the town council, you were working with your people in the town. Now there are people in Carndonagh, people in Moville, Glengad, Newtown, that are making decisions for our town.

“Now they might be the right decisions and they may be wrong decisions, but there is no communication for how they arrive at these decisions. And we are the business people that bring the people into Buncrana, that put the money into the tills, and we have to pay rates to these representatives and their authority.”