The festive season is in full swing and Newry Chamber would like to wish everyone a very happy Christmas and a peaceful New Year.
It has been a very busy period for the business community coming up to the end of 2016 with the Christmas Charity Dinner, the Santa Run and a whole host of other events. During the last month, we held the First Ever Santa Colour Run which attracted record numbers raising almost £13,000 supporting 23 local charities. Following that on the 1st of December, we held the 17th Annual Christmas Charity Dinner which attracted almost 750 guests. After breaking the £1 million fundraising target for local charities two years ago, people were equally generous this year with just over £100,000 raised for local causes.
I am also delighted to say that speaking to some of our local retailers it has been an extremely busy Christmas period from a trade perspective especially in the last few weeks with a considerable spike in the number of cross border shoppers.
Other highlights of the year include our Annual Gala Dinner with guest speaker, CEO of Norbrook, Liam Nagle and the 2nd NI Small Business Conference held in November which attracted over 170 delegates.
On a lobbying front, this has again been an exceptionally busy year for Newry Chamber, one in which we lobbied hard pre the UK referendum on Brexit and have engaged extensively post Brexit hosting a number of roundtables with The NI Secretary of State, NI Agent for the Bank of England, The Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flannagan TD and more recently An Taoiseach Enda Kenny.
As the regions primary business lobbying organisation the Chamber has continued to promote investment in the region and has represented the interests of the local business community with politicians and key decision makers at local, regional and central Government level.
Looking forward to 2017, we have another fantastic line up of events both from a networking and business support perspective including our Bi Annual Business Awards on 28th September 2017.
We will continue our lobbying efforts for key infrastructural transport projects for the area such as the Southern Relief Road and the Narrow Water Bridge as well as lobbying to ensure our city centre is fibre optic broadband enabled. Continuing to market the city centre as a primary retail destination as well as tackling issues such as car parking, pay and display, signage and lighting will all be on the agenda for 2017.
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