THE shutters have finally come down on Lafferty’s Supermarket in Creeslough – sounding the deathknell of a business which has served its community for almost half a century.
The future of the petrol station will be decided in the courts on Friday.
But staff were given a 15-minute warning – and the supermarket was gone.
After a protracted battle to save the village shop and a family pub
“It was a surreal moment… a scene reminiscent of the pages from the John Healy novel, ‘Death of an Irish Town’ published in 1968,” writes journalist John McAteer in today’s edition of the Tirconaill Tribune.
“The iconic book chronicled the economic and social decline of rural life in the west of Ireland in a time of widespread poverty and mass emigration. Those dark days in Irish life came back to Creeslough this week amid deepening concerns over the future of this historic village and the 29 jobs already lost,” writes McAteer.
“The clinical closure is hard to capture fully in mere words as a lifetime’s work of one family is wiped out as a security firm acting on a High Court decision arrives to give effect to the order for closure.
“Workers inside the shop have spoken of a team of around nineteen people entering the shop: seeking out the proprietors, the keys and after a brief few words with staff, they were requested to leave: in 15 minutes it was all over as the shutters were closed.
“The cold hand of officialdom works in a very definitive way without histrionics or much else and it is all over in a tick as everyone files out the door of their workplace.”
You can read John McAteer’s account of the closure in today’s Tirconaill Tribune.
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