THE OCCUPY DAME Street protest in Dublin city centre is threatening jobs and “killing” small businesses in the area, a Temple Bar shopowner has said.

The camp in front of the Central Bank on Dublin’s Dame Street is stopping potential customers from seeing shops and cutting off foot traffic to the area, according to Frank McQuade who has been in business in the area for 25 years.

“It would be ok if we knew it was going to be for ‘x’ amount of time but there’s no end in sight,” said McQuade, who owns three clothes shops on Fownes Street which faces the Occupy camp.

There was no-one in the Occupy Dame Street camp available for comment this afternoon.

The number of customers to shops in the area has decreased since the camp was erected last October. Most of the shops in the Temple Bar area are small independent businesses.

“What worries me is that we’d normally make a lot of our money from October to December and it’s killing us,” McQuade told TheJournal.ie this afternoon. “It’s leaving us without money to buy new stock”.

I’ve nothing against people protesting but they should be after the banks, not us. They shouldn’t be affecting the small people.

Small business owners from Temple Bar meet regularly with the occupiers, and the camp cleared a small path through the plaza as a concession to allow more people to walk through the area.

Shops in the area have also put up posters to highlight how the camp is affecting business. However, McQuade said that some small businesses in the area had taken down the posters after they were “hassled” about them.

“Everyone says to let them protest and that’s fine – we’re ok with that,” said McQuade. “I just don’t think everyone would want it on their doorstep”.