Opinion

Claire Simpson: Executive's lockdown easing a messy business for retailers

People queueing outside Dunnes stores in Dublin. Picture by Niall Carson, Press Association
People queueing outside Dunnes stores in Dublin. Picture by Niall Carson, Press Association People queueing outside Dunnes stores in Dublin. Picture by Niall Carson, Press Association

Just as swallows migrate south for the winter and wildebeest move across the Serengeti, so last week saw one of the other great sights in nature - the return of queues at Ikea.

Who knew that so many had such an interest in flatpack garden furniture, bags of tea lights and those weird heart-shaped cushions with hands?

Not me, certainly.

Jane Austen wasn’t wrong when she wrote that “one half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other”.

I’m in the half of the world that can’t understand people who want to queue for two hours to eat KFC or who will fight to the death to get the last bag of compost in B&Q.

If lockdown has taught us anything it’s that people are less concerned with any possible infringement of their civil liberties than they are with the person who bought the last tin of fence paint in The Range.

"I'll give you my stone-effect garden light in the shape of a hedgehog when you pry it from my cold, dead hands,” they cry.

Each to their own or, in the words of my much missed Granny “better raving there than in your bed” - a phrase I’ve said to myself several times a day during lockdown, particularly in the moments when I’ve wanted to take to my bed and never emerge again.

With our noted love of shopping-as-something-to-do, it seems particularly baffling that the executive’s response to easing lockdown for retailers has been so confused.

Ikea in Belfast opened on Monday of last week. Branches of Debenhams opened this week. Yet most smaller retailers will be forced to keep their doors closed until Friday.

And the position seemed even more nonsensical when the Republic announced a major easing in lockdown last Friday.

As shops across the Republic opened their doors on Monday, and the inevitable queues formed outside Zara, it seemed bizarre that someone in Aughnacloy could drive across the border to shop for shoes in Monaghan town but not in their own county.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar had said that the executive had been informed of the lockdown changes. Deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill also told RTE that the executive has an “inbuilt flexibility to respond to the conditions on any given day”.

So it was particularly odd that changes to the north’s shopping rules were not introduced more swiftly when executive ministers had advance warning of the Republic’s plans.

News that New Zealand had eradicated the virus prompted many to wonder if better co-operation between Stormont and the Irish government could have led to a similar result in Ireland. It’s not a particularly helpful comparison, given New Zealand’s distance from other countries and its sparse population, but Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s decisive response showed that fast action was key in reducing the coronavirus spread, making the easing of restrictions that much simpler.

The Republic was quicker to go into lockdown and it has been quicker to emerge. And perhaps more importantly, its roadmap on how and when restrictions will be eased has also been much clearer. The Irish government’s relatively successful handling of lockdown, in contrast to the shambles seen at Westminster, has been as much about the clear messages it has transmitted to the public than its actual response to the disease.

Exact travel restrictions, greater clarity around the reopening of shops, churches and pubs, and stricter rules on the movement of older and more vulnerable residents have meant that, anecdotally at least, citizens in the Republic have been more inclined to adhere to the regulations. It’s much easier to stay indoors, away from loved ones, when there is an end date in sight.

Health minister Robin Swann said last week that he was concerned the public’s adherence to lockdown rules had began to “fray”. But how else could it be otherwise when our roadmap has been so unclear? Queuing at garden centres = fine; protests against systemic racism = a breach of regulations.

It’s now up to the executive to give us a timeline of when lockdown will be eased - and crucially one which is in keeping with the Republic. Otherwise, we could end up in a situation where people can attend Mass in Letterkenny and not Loughguile or have a pint in Dundalk but not Dunloy. If that happens then there will be no regulated emergence from lockdown and no way of controlling the disease.