LONG READ: County Tipperary Chamber encourage Cashel business owners to join exciting network

Footfall on the main street of Cashel, a lack of parking, and fewer festivals and summer events compared to neighbouring Tipperary towns were among the concerns raised by local business owners at a recent meeting with the Tipperary County Chamber.

The meeting took place at Halla Na Féile on Wednesday, July 9, where nearly two dozen business owners were in attendance.

Local Councillor Declan Burgess organised the event in collaboration with the Chamber to “explore ways to better support and connect with businesses in Cashel and the surrounding area.

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“In the absence of a local Chamber structure, we recognise the importance of ensuring your voice is heard and represented within the wider business community.”

The former Cashel Chamber President, Martin Lynch, recently started a new career in An Garda Síochána, prompting the Fine Gael councillor to call the meeting.

“As a local councillor, I felt the business community in the town needed a bit of support,” Cllr Burgess began.

“Michelle and her team at the County Chamber have been doing an awful lot of work in connecting businesses, supporting businesses, and supporting them in different ventures.

“We felt that this is a necessary step to look at how we can formalise something going forward, encouraging business to join the Chamber, and formulate a Cashel Business Forum out of that with support from the Chamber.”

Cllr Burgess then handed over to the CEO of County Tipperary Chamber, Michelle Aylward who outlined the work that the Chamber have done in recent times to support businesses across Tipperary.

“The most important message about today is that we want to work with all the businesses and become the voice of all businesses in Tipperary and support them going forward at a local, national, and international level,” Ms Aylward stated.

She continued by detailing the lobbying work with Chambers Ireland, Town Teams initiatives, and BIDs that her and her team are actively working on to help grow local businesses.

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One of their more recent and successful campaigns has been the launch of the Love Tipperary gift cards which function in the same manner as the popular One4all vouchers, but work solely in businesses within the Premier County.

“Our new Love Tipperary card is 0% commission, it doesn’t cost the retailers to accept the card in their store. The beauty of it is every penny that’s generated in Tipperary stays in Tipperary. If you take this card to Limerick, you cannot use it.

“For example, Thurles has really gotten behind the card, all of the employers are buying it and getting behind it which keeps all the money generated in that region.

“You can go to bars, restaurants, hotels, you can get your petrol or your diesel on it. Basically, if you have a till and a working credit card machine you can accept this voucher today.

“The other beauty of it is that you cannot use this card online, you must physically go into the shop to spend it. You can have a physical card or you can have an app to use it too.”

The Love Tipperary was initially launched on November 28, 2024. As of July 2025, over €190,000 worth of gift cards have been sold and over 300 businesses across the county are actively accepting them.

Ms Aylward broke down the data month-by-month to show that nearly €100,000 worth of Love Tipperary gift cards were sold in December 2024 in the lead up to Christmas. While €50,000 worth of cards were sold in May and June of this year as they are proving a popular present for Tipperary’s teachers as the school year drew to a close.

Next on the agenda at Halla Na Féile was County Tipperary Chamber’s relationship with Skillnet and their offering of heavily discounted staff training services for Tipperary business owners.

Ms Aylward explained that in 2024, over 1,000 businesses across the county availed of Skillnet training which amounted to nearly 6,000 training days heavily subsidised by the Chamber.

Microsoft Excel and Word, Level 6, 7, and 8 courses in childare, AI learning, first aid responder refresher courses, and vetinary training were among the most popular courses availed of in recent times.

Members of the Chamber can avail of up to 80% of the funding for these courses, leaving just a fifth of the fee to pay themselves to upskill their employees.

Ms Aylward described the Skillnet offerings as “a huge benefit that we’re lucky to have here in Tipperary.

“One multi-national in particular availed of Skillnet training worth €78,000 last year. That’s a phenominal amount of money. If you were able to implement some of that into your businesses to help retain and upskill your staff, why wouldn’t you. People often say ‘what’s the catch?’, well there is no catch.”

The reaction at the meeting from local business owners in Cashel was largely positive. Although some were quick to ask what the Chamber could do for smaller businesses with little to no staff.

Ms Aylward was emphatic in her response that building a business community in Cashel and creating a network of small business owners that the Chamber could then repesent and support when it comes to funding, conversing with the County Council, and staging networking events would be no bad thing regardless of the size of each business.

A wider discussion was later held on the decline of Cashel’s main street as a destination for shoppers, reeduced footfall in recent years, a lack of parking and hotel options were also cited as areas where there is room for improvement.

Councillor Liam Browne and Ms Aylward both agreed that having one organisation under which the people of Cashel couldl voice their business concerns makes sense, and that a unified approach could lead to some positive results in the town.

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