Message from the President

Dear Member,

It was a privilege to be elected President of South Dublin Chamber at our recent AGM. I look forward to working with and representing you our members on the issues that impact all our businesses.

I am Managing Director of Ascension Executive Recruitment and get to work with some great companies all over South Dublin and throughout Ireland and internationally. The executive recruitment market is a great barometer for how the economy is performing and we are exceptionally busy at present, long may it continue!

I recently stepped down as Chair of the DSPCA which is based in Rathfarnham. As an animal lover I had the privilege of serving on the Board for 10 years, 8 of which I was Chair. This is an amazing organisation, and it will always have a place in my heart.

Our mission as your local chamber is to support the economic growth of our county so that it is a great place to live, work and study. We do this in many ways through being the voice of our business community and providing the supports our members need. As a member you have many opportunities to support your business through your membership. You can access, networking meetings, our B2B network meets every week, there are training courses and seminars, big events such as our Business Awards highlighting the best in business in our county, specialist committees such as our CSR committee and member briefings and inductions along with weekly information updates on what’s important to you.

Our county marketing programme showcases what is best in our county and why we are so proud of our county’s economic success. Our researched economic reports inform the key stakeholders on how to continue to make progress whilst maintaining our strong links to our wider community, our last report Building on Success was published in 2022. Our reach is not just local we work regionally with Dun Laoghaire Rathdown, Fingal and Kildare Chamber, nationally through Chambers Ireland and at a European and World level through Eurochambres and the World federation of Chambers. Chambers are the oldest and biggest business organisation in the world.

Businesses are part of the wider community, and we pride ourselves on our close connections with local voluntary organisations and community groups. We see it as vitally important that everyone benefits from our strong local economy. We also acknowledge the wider responsibilities we all share in addressing global issues such as climate change and our Chamber has signed up to the UN Sustainability Goals in particular, we are championing 3 goals. Goal 5 Gender Equality, Goal 10 Reducing Inequalities and Goal 13 Climate Action.

Today many businesses are experiencing challenges from rising inflation driven by the energy crisis and housing through to congestion on our roads and shortage of talent when recruiting or filling a vacancy. We will both locally and through Chambers Ireland nationally keep offering our solutions on how to address these problems.

We look to celebrate and build on the success of the local and national economy, today in Ireland we have 2.7 million people working, a budget surplus of 16.2 billion, unemployment at historic low level of 3.9%. Our economy is projected to remain on a solid growth path with GDP growth of 5.5%. Inflation is predicted to drop to 2.6% in 2024.

For 39 years our chamber has represented our business community originally as Tallaght Chamber then with the establishment of South Dublin County we became South Dublin Chamber. With our own local government comes many more opportunities and we look forward to continuing our collaborative work with South Dublin County Council as we explore and develop more opportunities for the successful growth of our county.

Mairead Fleming    
President