Retail Excellence Ireland is reporting that overall sales have fallen by close to a third.
Clothing and footwear stores, along with coffee shops, were worst affected - they saw their figures slashed by three quarters.
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Retail Excellence managing director Duncan Graham says the month of June did give him hope:
"We really got hit hard in those sectors and clearly during the period of lockdown a lot of people were going online and doing their essential shopping.
"Again what was noticeable was that June actually picked up and it was probably around equal to the previous year because there was a lot of pent-up demand there.
"People had not spent money for three months so overall June was a pretty good month for the sector."
