IT WAS MORE than fitting that yesterday’s rent protest meeting of Grafton Street traders should have been staged in Bewley’s famous café on the Dublin high street.

The 30 traders, including executives of most of the overseas multiples, were only too well aware that in the past year Bewley’s rent was increased by a mammoth 93 per cent to almost €1,475,000. Though the operators of the café (Cambell Catering) were happy to host the gathering and lay on coffee and buns, they made a point of not being represented so as not to reignite their long running dispute with landlords Treasury Holdings. And if you think that that rent increase was savage, then take a look across the street at McDonalds fast food outlet which is facing a staggered increase of 120 per cent – from €520,000 to more than €1.1 million.

Footwear trader John Corcoran, who called yesterday’s meeting to pressurise landlords into reducing excessive rents because of the fall off in consumer spending, said it was obvious that at least half a dozen businesses on the street were in “serious difficulties”. Smaller landlords were making concessions but the institutions, who own most of the buildings, were “proving inflexible”.

The traders are also to attempt to persuade the Government to “park” upwards-only rent reviews which they argue are particularly unfair to tenants in a recession.

Even if the politicians opt to steer clear of the dispute, the indications are that Dublin’s reputation as the sixth most expensive place to open a shop in the world is rapidly coming to an end. New lettings on the street due later this year are expected to be at significantly lower rent levels than in the past. One notable absentee from yesterday’s meeting (though he sent a representative) was David Andrews, managing director of Weir Son jewellers, who might well have second thoughts about comments he made last summer emphasising that Grafton Street’s location and cachet meant it had “the resilience to withstand any slowdown”.