Chamber, council plan all-out effort for Christmas

Navan Chamber of Commerce and Navan Town Council plan to make an all-out effort to promote the town in the run-up to Christmas. A recent joint meeting of the Chamber and the council heard that the town is not being marketed sufficiently and efforts will now be made to keep shoppers at home this Christmas and attract new business into the town. Cllr Joe Reilly appealed to the people of Navan to “invest in ourselves”. He added: “The next two months are going to be extremely economically difficult for many families and I would appeal to the people of Navan to shop in the town when possible and help secure Navan jobs and business. “This was the first official meeting held between members of the Chamber and Navan Town councillors for many years. It would be my wish that we continue to meet and work together to help support jobs and business in the town. “It is very clear from the meeting that Navan is not being promoted to the extent that it has to be and I welcome the emphasis that the Chamber of Commerce is placing on marketing Navan to our own population in the first instance and then to the wider world,” he said. Cllr Reilly pointed out that Navan and its environs had a population of 38,000 people. “Both the Chamber of Commerce and Navan Town Council recognise the need to win the economic support of the people of Navan for Navan. I expressed concerns as to lack of investment into Navan by the multinational supermarket companies. “I recognise they are an important employers in Navan but they invest little or nothing back into the local economy,” he added. He said that if they are prepared to extract a profit from Navan, then they should be prepared, as the smaller and local business do, to invest in the communities that support them, Cllr Reilly added. “I believe Navan Chamber of Commerce and Town Council can work together in co-operation to build the physical, marketing and social infrastructure to meet the needs of a modern, go-ahead town like Navan,” he said.