LIDL HAS CONFIRMED that all 30 staff members at its Fortunestown Lane store will be redeployed to other stores in the area, following the incident at the premises on Friday night.

Eight men between the ages of 24 and 47 have been charged with various offences including theft, burglary and trespassing arising from the incident at a Lidl store on Friday evening.

A number of garda units were deployed following reports of burglary and thefts of vehicles in the Fortunestown Lane area of Tallaght.

Gardaí said “substantial damage” was caused to the supermarket and further damage to another premises in Jobstown.

In a statement this afternoon, Lidl said that a meeting was held today with its staff members from the Fortunestown Lane store and confirmed that they will moved to nearby stores to work.

“We can confirm that each of the 30 team members will be redeployed to other stores in the area. We will not have criminal actions of others impact the livelihood of our hard-working team,” the statement said.

On behalf of the store manager, Ruth, and her team, we would like to thank everyone for their kind words in the aftermath of this incident.

The team is genuinely blown away by the swell of support from, not just the community that they serve daily, but from right around the country.

**Update on Lidl Fortunestown**

We held a meeting today with everyone and have redeployed them to other stores, we won’t let the criminal actions of others impact on our hard working team. pic.twitter.com/zM5TdvGb4F — Lidl Ireland (@lidl_ireland) March 5, 2018 Source: Lidl Ireland /Twitter

Speaking to TheJournal.ie on Friday night, Sinn Féin South Dublin County Council Cathal King said that “the whole community is absolutely furious over this”.

Redevelopment

Lidl did not confirm whether there are current plans to redevelop the store after the incident.

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Lidl Ireland had applied to South Dublin County Council for planning permission for the redevelopment of the store on 22 February 2017.

The application proposed the demolition of the existing single-storey building in order to make way for the construction of a two-storey mono-pitch licenced food store.

It also proposed the redevelopment and extension of the existing car park to provide an extra 145 car parking spaces.

Lidl did not provide comment to TheJournal.ie regarding the planning permission application.