GOVERNMENTS across the world have struggled to support businesses and workers in the face of the Covid pandemic.
Had Ireland operated as one island, a 'Zero Covid' strategy could have been adopted, severely reducing both the health and economic impacts of the virus. Partition meant that strategy couldn't be pursued, creating huge pressure to protect the health service and the economy.
The Executive has provided extensive economic support, devising and implementing schemes that would normally take months in a matter of days.
While it can never fully compensate for the devastating and unprecedented impact of Covid. It is therefore imperative to continue to support businesses and to improve that support as much as possible.
In his platform piece in the Irish News (Friday November 13) the SDLP’s business spokesperson Pat Catney offers no constructive proposals.
Nor does he recognise the support that has been provided. On the contrary, he claims that the retail and hospitality sectors have received “very little support” from the Department of Finance, headed up by Sinn Féin’s Conor Murphy.
In fact, the Department of Finance has given all retail and hospitality businesses a rates holiday for the entire financial year.
That Department also administered the £10k and £25k grants provided to retail and hospitality earlier in the year.
Mr Catney also criticises the speed at which support has been provided. I agree that support schemes should be as light-touch as possible, with minimal bureaucracy.
While some schemes have been devised and delivered at pace, others have been extremely slow.
Mr Catney neglects to mention that one of the slowest schemes is the Department for Infrastructure’s payments for taxi drivers, coaches or buses, which has not been delivered seven months into the pandemic.
This week’s good news on a vaccine offers hope that the pandemic will be coming to an end.
In the meantime, we need to lessen reliance on economic restrictions through mass testing and a more effective test, trace, and isolation service.
We also need targeted interventions for retail and hospitality which have been hardest hit by the pandemic.
Perhaps Mr Catney should focus on contributing to this important piece of work rather than disingenuous and ill-informed point-scoring.
Caoimhe Archibald MLA is Sinn Féin's economy spokesperson
