PEOPLE at home and from across Britain, Europe and further afield are contemplating a well-earned break, with many considering a holiday in Northern Ireland, testament to the hard work of our publicans, hoteliers and restaurateurs in providing a world class product in a must-see destination.
But many of those considering coming here, especially tourists from outside Northern Ireland, may be left bemused as they wander our streets over Easter to find our pubs, hotels and restaurants closed early or not open at all.
This is all courtesy of outdated laws that restrict the sale of alcohol across the Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday over the Easter period - laws that our nearest neighbour and biggest competitor for tourists, the Republic of Ireland, has now ditched.
Restricted Easter licensing hours is not about religion, for if it were, we wouldn’t have supermarkets selling discounted alcohol at 8am on Good Friday morning while our hospitality industry can’t even provide a glass of wine with your lunch.
The restriction on selling alcohol is even stranger when you consider the majority of Northern Ireland businesses open normally on Good Friday. Staff in our industry therefore lose out on work and shifts at a time when most of the rest of the population are at work.
As our hospitality sector is barred from selling alcohol under normal trading hours across the Easter weekend, in the Republic’s bars, hotels and restaurants it will be business as usual in 2018.
With previous Easter trading losses in Northern Ireland estimated at £16 million, the removal of all restrictions in the south will only drive up those losses towards £20m this year. That’s lost revenue that’s used to employ people, pay taxes and keep entertainment venues open.
It is well past time decision makers updated our outdated laws and allowed the hospitality sector to open as normal across Easter. Maintaining these outdated laws is simply unsustainable. It drives local people to holiday elsewhere and sends out a message to tourists that Northern Ireland is closed for business and surely can only deter them from coming back.
Who wants to visit somewhere at Easter to discover you can’t socialise and experience the friendly welcome its pubs, hotels and restaurants are famous for, because they are forced to close up early for four days?
It is also an affront to those hard-working people hereI who want to enjoy a pint with friends or a glass of wine with their dinner in our many pubs, hotels and restaurants. It needlessly bans our publicans, hoteliers and restaurateurs from operating their normal and legitimate businesses – and at the official start of the tourism season too.
The Easter licensing laws make even less sense when you set them in the context of our hospitality sector’s performance over recent years. The industry consistently outperforms the economy as a whole and now supports more than 60,000 jobs in Northern Ireland and contributes more than £1.4 billion a year to the economy.
A healthy hospitality sector is good for all of us and the decision makers, whether they be in Belfast or London, need to start supporting us, not holding us back.
Our political leaders can’t keep expecting our hospitality sector to grow and provide jobs and pay taxes while it sits on its hands and ignores the obstacles we in the industry face.
It’s time to scrap the outdated restrictions that only apply to our hospitality industry and correct the anomaly in the licensing legislation. These restrictions don’t reduce alcohol consumption, they simply drive people to drink more at home and tourists to vote with their feet and go someone else.
:: Colin Neill is chief executive of Hospitality Ulster
