Four years after the financial crash, discount retailer Charlie O’Loughlin announced plans to create 100 new jobs by opening 12 new stores. It was a bold move at a time when few Irish businesses were hiring, less than a year after Ireland had been forced to seek a bailout from the European Union and the IMF. “We stopped expanding in 2007 because the rents were so crazy and so high. There are now more favourable rents available,” O’Loughlin said at the time. O’Loughlin then operated 50 stores nationwide and planned to expand into towns such as Westport and Sligo. His…

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