At Groome PetVets I have reduced the price of many of our key services again recently.

In February I looked at our price list critically and reduced the price of six key services by one third.

 In July I addressed the fall off in week-day customer numbers by introducing a 25euro consultation fee on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings in both clinics.

I have also reduced dog neuter cost to 78 euro and Bitch spay to 98 euro on those Tues, Wed, Thurs off-peak  times.

We have reduced booster costs to 25 euro and puppy kitten Vaccination to 30 euro. The boarding and kenneling service at Kildare Vet is also cheaper than last year with most dogs qualifying for the 12 euro per day fee and a further 10% discount for stays longer than 8 days.

Before readers log off thinking this  is just another marketing blog I want to say that every other SME I know of still in business has APPlied the same cost cuts.

 Commercial rates have not reduced as budget-stressed local authorities seek revenue from the limited sources available. Many small businesses are simply unwilling to pay rates this year and will remain in arrears of rates, I predict into next year and the year after, as the rates bill joins a pile under a paper weight on the owner-manager’s desk.

 My PRSI contributions have not reduced, neither has the rate of VAT I am required to pay and then pass on to my customers. Rents have reduced as the smaller commercial property owners have become increasingly anxious to keep their tenants- though unfortunately many retailers and other small business tenants are now falling behind in their rents, while in many sectors the concept of upward only rent review remains the norm.

Rising waste disposal costs, implimentation of parking charges even in small towns, consistently high motor fuel costs, road toll costs and so on- these all form parts of the cost base of the Irish small business and can broadly be blamed on either the pressures of the macro-economy OR the pressures of government costs- both of which are being brought to bear on the SME sector as externalities beyond our/my control.

In the macro- economy world business forces are governed by multinationals with revenues often in excess of a small country’s GDP- these forces now must extract the penalty for share-holder driven growth strategy from wherever they can. In the case of our budget obsessed Irish government; government and public sector costs- driven up by years of appeasing unions amidst complacency about ongoing revenue- will be brought down by Bord Snip implimentations , but will be brought down slowly.

 In the mean time small business have been targeted to foot the bill.
Recent media reports about the demise of “rip-off Ireland” may be greatly exaggerated. I believe balance within our economy cant be acheived until Banks, Government, Government employees, Trade Unions and Share-holder driven Big Business bring their own cost base and ransom-like tariffs into line with the new economic reality that small businesses envisage.

There is an appetite for change of the political landscape in Ireland and some debate on the need for a new radicalism in political thinking. I believe that radicalism needs to come from  tax-payers  who are prepared to pay for our banks’ mistakes but not at the cost of our sick, young, old and vulnerable paying with lost opportunity, lost education or lost livesof mid

Those who want the big business economics of placating world lending agencies tempered by an ideology that our country is more than just one failed bank, more than just a budgeted set of accounts, that our culture, our people are to be nurtured, educated, fed, cared for and Led.

This is very much radicalism with a small r. I believe we must be very careful not to allow the debate for change to be ambushed by Left , or right, ideological forces who if allowed grow to become relevant could polarise the electoral process, create dysfunctional and paralysed coalition government and alienate much needed foreign investors. In the face of the body politic’s poor handling of public relations, seeming imperviousness to the plight of indigenous small business, tardy decision making and those continued embarrassing revelations about expenses and God knows what else opportunists  now have the climate to thrive.

But I believe as a small business owner and employer that their agenda for self-interest would prove as damaging as those big business forces now hoist by their own petard, though still looking for the rest of us to pay!

The US political landscape is being changed radically by the Tea party movement. We dont need a regressive fear-driven influence one could loosely charactise as “far right” conservatism. But we do need a people’s movement that reflects the enlightened progressive secular people we have become. A people that our politicians suddenly and irrevocably no longer represent. Continue reading →