Northern Ireland

Poots calls for recovery timetable for businesses

Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs Minister Edwin Poots.
Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs Minister Edwin Poots. Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs Minister Edwin Poots.

Agriculture minister Edwin Poots has said businesses should have a timetable for reopening, despite the executive previously saying the coronavirus recovery plan would not be 'date lead'.

The DUP minister said "a timeline would allow businesses in all sectors to plan for their safe reopening".

"Hopefully the executive can give those in retail, hospitality and across the economy the certainty they need very soon", he added.

The assembly will be briefed on Thursday by the Chief Medical Officer Michael McBride and the Chief Scientific Officer, Professor Ian Young, to establish the current R rate, the measure of transmission of the virus.

Minister Poots cautioned that despite there being no deaths recorded on Tuesday, for the first time since the crisis began, the infection rate could still be rising.

"You could particularly look at car showrooms and the larger shops that are multi goods and white goods and so forth, we do need to be cautious and the advice needs to come from the chief medical officer and chief scientific officer first.

"We do need to get over Covid-19, we do need to move on, we do need to get some degree of normality coming back in and people I know are frustrated, all of us are frustrated", he told the BBC.

On Brexit Mr Poots said there were "opportunities" in the British government's Brexit plans, despite the DUP previously opposing Boris Johnson's deal.

By January Northern Ireland will be the only part of the UK that will continue to follow EU rules on agricultural and manufactured goods.

The North will also continue to enforce the EU's customs code at its ports with new processes and checks for goods coming from the rest of the UK that may be for a European market.

"It has the potential to get right down to around one percent of commercial vehicles that are entering NI, and in that case that wouldn't be particularly damaging to the economy", said Mr Poots.

"We would have the advantage of actually having access to the Single Market and to the UK market, and make NI an attractive place for inward investment.

"So we need to be very sure that we can actually maximise that advantage, whilst at the other side minimising the disadvantage", he added.

However Ulster Unionist leader Steve Aiken said he was "genuinely surprised and concerned at Edwin Poots’ warm words for the Government`s latest Brexit proposals for Northern Ireland".

“Regrettably, based on our recent bitter experience of UK-EU negotiations, we cannot afford to just rely on hope and wish for the best.

"We need to make abundantly clear to the Government over and over again that Northern Ireland should never have been treated any differently to the rest of the UK in these Brexit negotiations and that any further movement away from maintaining the integrity of the United Kingdom`s single market will leave Northern Ireland businesses high and dry and cause long lasting damage to the Union itself".