Wilton Shopping Centre reserves designated parking for frontline staff

Wilton Shopping Centre has reserved designated car parking spaces for frontline staff working in Cork University Hospital (CUH).

The 130 designated spaces were made available over a week ago and have been full from Monday to Friday.

Manager of Wilton Shopping Centre, Susanne Irwin, said she was happy to allocate the north car park behind Penneys to “anyone working in CUH” in the hope that it would make the start to their day a little easier.

“There’s about 130 spaces being used at the minute and they are literally right across the road from work for people,” she said.

She said that all anyone can do is do their best to help the frontline staff and she said that the car park is “just something small” to give back to them.

“That’s all you can do is help. We’re not over there and we’re not dealing with everything they’re dealing with so this is just something small that makes it, I hope, a little bit easier for them,” she said.

She said that the shopping centre still has around eight to ten shops open, including two chemists, two health shops and banks but said that it has been quiet.

“It is eerily quiet around the place, which is great because that’s what it should be. I'd say the most that’s around at any one time is ten or fifteen people but everyone is staying back from each other and they’re all observing the social distancing that they should be observing so it’s great to see.”

She said she would hope that business will return to Wilton as normal upon the reopening of the shopping centre when the current Covid-19 emergency comes to an end.

“There’s a few smaller tenants in the centre here, local people, it’s their family run businesses but I would hope that they would all open again.

“We won’t know until it comes to it because no one knows how long this is going to go on for,” she said.