THERE are indications that an announcement on Stormont's High Street Voucher Scheme is coming as early as today, after recent pressure building from all sides on Economy Minister Gordon Lyons.
Sinn Féin chair of the economy committee Caoimhe Archibald said despite being "talked about for a year now... three consecutive DUP ministers have so far failed to get the ...scheme up and running".
"This scheme is about putting money into people's pockets. It’s about injecting money into our hard-pressed high streets in order to support our local economy and to support local businesses to recover, protect jobs, and workers and families’ livelihoods."
Independent unionist committee member Claire Sugden said any delay will "lessen its impact and the scheme had been due to start "from September 12",
"Given the time it will take for people to sign up and the £100 cards to be sent, we risk having this economic stimulus scheme running in the busy Christmas shopping period when shops are at their busiest," she said.
But the DUP minister insisted there has been no delay to the Covid-19 economic stimulus scheme, which will see all adult householders receive £100 to spend in shops in Northern Ireland.
Mr Lyons said he was working with officials to make sure it was rolled out in the "right and proper way", which would be "in another day or two".
"I wanted to make sure that the necessary legislation was in place and that is now in place as of yesterday."
He suggested "some people have got mixed up the dates in terms of the legislative basis for the scheme to proceed and the date when the portal itself is going to open".
"In the very near future I hope to give people an indication of how this is all going to work, the exact time for the portal to be open, the website that people will need to log on to, and the process in terms of getting those applications verified, and also then when the cards can go out and when the cards can be spent."
He promised businesses would "very, very soon" have "that certainty" as they are keen to "help incentivise the use of the card in local independent stores".
The minister asked people to be "patient for another day or two"
"There's a lot of excitement out there, people are looking forward to spending their cards, and I'm looking forward to them getting out there as well so we can give that real boost to our economy in the short term and also, hopefully, change behaviours and bring people back into the high street in the long term as well."
The vouchers can be spent with any retailer that had a physical presence in the north but Mr Lyons urged people to spend the cards in local independent retailers rather than with multinationals to "help those businesses that have struggled for so long".
