Busy morning as Penneys opens ahead of schedule

PHOTO: Customers queueing for Penneys in Athlone this morning.

Penneys in Athlone's Golden Island Shopping Centre opened its door ahead of schedule this morning.

The move to open shortly after 9.30am was presumably designed to avoid some of the scenes of huge queues that were witnessed in Dublin on Friday when other Penneys outlets reopened.

It's understood there were a handful of people waiting for the Athlone store to open at that time.

By 10.30am, the scheduled opening time, a queue of perhaps 20 people could be seen in Golden Island Shopping Centre due to a system limiting the number of customers in store.