*Carmel Connaire (right) at the bench outside The Coffee Hatch with.
A CAMPAIGN TO save a bench outside a Lahinch commercial premises is garnering momentum with over 700 signatures to a petition pleading for it to be retained.
An objection to the presence of the bench outside The Coffee Hatch at the Promenande in Lahinch was made to Clare County Council at the end of March prompting the local authority to investigate the matter.
Licences for off-street furniture were previously granted by the Council to The Edge for four benches, three of these have been removed by the restaurant but one has since been utilised by The Coffee Hatch.
Now open for four years, The Coffee Hatch is run by Carmel Connaire and has a total of eleven part-time staff.
Cllr Shane Talty (FF) said all businesses in Lahinch must be given the same treatment. He told The Clare Echo, “A complaint was made to the County Council by a neighbouring business. I’ve no objection to the presence of the bench if it can be regularised and I believe they have the option to apply for a licence for the bench, it is important that all businesses receive equitable treatment and consideration be given to businesses paying rates to provide seating indoors and outdoors”.
Speaking to The Clare Echo, Carmel said he was “really disappointed” to learn of the complaint. “I look at the group of sea swimmers, I know they set up their own petition to keep the bench because to them it is really important, there are maybe 200 sea swimmers anything from ten to twenty of them gather here after a swim, it is vital for them, a lot of them won’t buy a coffee, sixty percent will buy a coffee and the forty percent will have the chat, it is where they know, you can hear the laughing a mile away and it is a lovely space to be in”.
She recalled, “I was contacted by the County Council ten days ago and they said there was an objection made about the presence of the bench, it was made by a local representative on behalf of a business that there was no permission for it to be there. We’ve been using the bench since COVID, I spoke with the Council, they said they were acting on the complaint”.
As of Wednesday evening, over 700 signatures have been secured for their petition to keep the bench, this documentation will be presented to the County Council. “I did a little petition asking people if they’d like to retain it, I was willing to take it away when the Council asked me, I wanted to get feedback on it, I got 700 signatures to keep the bench, I ran out of paper in the first hour, I had 140 signatures in the first hour. I kept coming out with A4 sheets of paper, it is full and it is across every sector of the community here, business people, loads of people have signed it, they have come specifically to sign it, people love the space, there is no loitering or messing, I clean the place every morning”.
Discussions are ongoing between Carmel and the Council, she has asked to retain the bench and it is expected an application for a licence will be made.
Carmel continued, “There was already street furniture there since COVID, the licence was given for four benches which were belonging to The Edge which was when Alan Clancy was running it, they had the permission and I had the unit here in the corner, they had four street benches, they got permission to put them out during COVID, the bench that is there is the last one belonging to the four, the rest were taken away”. She said the benches were granted a licence but for a different business.
Living in Lahinch for the past thirty three years, the Galway native described The Coffee Hatch as “a family run business” with both her daughters working weekends.
Lahinch’s bench is “a space for the community rather than a space for a business,” according to Carmel. “It has evolved in the last couple of years, people talk to me about turning the corner at 7am and seeing people sitting there with their coffee before they go about their business, there is a lot of people that live alone who come here in the morning, there’s people with personal issues that they are dealing with that come here in the morning, we’re very aware of them and it is their space to connect, it is a fluid space so you don’t have to purchase something to sit down and have a chat at the bench, you don’t have to sit down, you can stand and have a laugh and a chat, it is the centrepoint of the community and it has become across all sectors of the community, I came down here on Friday evening at 9pm to sort the stock for Saturday and there was two older ladies sitting with their dogs having an ice-cream and two young girls about thirteen years of age they spotted the dogs and when I came back out they were all having a chat around the bench, those people didn’t know each other. It is really difficult to sit as a group in Lahinch in an open space and enjoy the view and the space”.
She admitted that their opening hours of 7am is “not really commercially viable in Lahinch but because of the amount of people coming to us and felt they needed the space before they went to work or going into an office all day or working remotely, we’ve a lot of people around here working remotely and this has been an outlet for them before they went off to do whatever editing or computer work in their own office, it evolved and it started getting busier and busier, we’ve a huge array of workers, teachers, people working remotely, older people, young people, it is a huge cross-generational space”.
Although the wall of the prom isn’t too far away from her premises, Carmel said the bench offers a comfortable place for people to sit and engage with each other. “Because it is round, it is safe because the barrier is there, people are tired so they want to sit, sometimes the prom wall is cold”.
A spokesperson for Clare County Council said they received the initial complaint on February 28th. “Under Section 71 of the Roads Act 1993 (as amended), any structure or object placed on a public road for purposes such as providing a service requires the consent of the Roads Authority. The team from the Ennistymon office has engaged with the owner on this matter and it is noted that the owner previously held a licence for street furniture which had lapsed. The owner has been informed that a valid annual licence is necessary to retain the bench on public property. Our understanding is that an application for a new licence has been submitted and will be assessed by planning on a case-by-case basis, as per standard procedure”.
