Academic: It’s hard to find words for how badly NI’s economy has been damaged by Covid measures

Dr Esmond Birnie, senior economist at Ulster University, questioned whether the government is really ready to pursue a “highly damaging” strategy of rolling lockdowns every few months until Covid is quashed.

Dr Birnie, a Cambridge graduate and former UUP MLA, was speaking at a time when the NI government has decided to clampdown on civil life in the Province in order to stem a rising number of Covid-19 infections.

READ THE LATEST ON THAT HERE.

He told the News Letter: “We need to keep as much of the economy open as possible. There’s a too-ready assumption that the answer to controlling or preventing infection is to shut things down.

“But the problem is this virus is going to be about for some time, until we have a vaccine – if indeed we get a vaccine. Even best case scenario, it could be the middle of next year.

“Can we really, seriously have a strategy of sort of, every six months, we go into lockdown?

“We really can’t have this stop-go strategy. It’s highly damaging.

“We need to find which parts of society the infection is spreading in... it is too blunt an instrument to shut down schools in totality, to shut down factories, construction sites, offices, etc.”

Asked how much damage had already been done to the NI economy, he said: “The problem is finding adequate language.”

The usual “clichés” like “catastrophic” and “unprecedented” are “probably all true”, he said.

“As a rough order of magnitude, based partly on various projections for the UK economy – but it’s likely to be similar here – on the level of output this year there is going to be a hit of at least 10%,” he said, adding this was based on the March 23-mid-June lockdown.

As to whether the Province can afford a fresh imposition of the measures seen in spring, he said: “It’s one of these hideous dilemmas because you’re talking of lives being lost.

“But I do very strongly think we should do everything possible to avoid going back to a generalised lockdown.”

He added that it “may well be justifiable to have sectors of the economy subject to heavy restrictions [like hospitality and catering] if there is evidence – perhaps there is – that those are sources of spread and infection”.

In terms of the economic cost of Covid to the UK, the Office for National Statistics says that in the first five months of the 2020/21 financial year alone, the government had borrowed £173.7 billion.

By comparison, the government had borrowed £56.6 billion for the entire year 2019/20.

For context, the UK’s entire annual defence budget stands at £55 billion.

Meanwhile, the amount of central government tax collected in August this year was £37.3 billion, down from £44.8 billion in August 2019.

Some commentators have made the point that wrecking the country’s tax base whilst simultaneously incurring big debts could make itself felt many years down the line in terms of hurting future generations.

Dr Birnie said: “The point is often made and it’s usually true, that decision-making does tend to have a bias towards the short-term, the immediate. It’s much harder to think about the well-being of a generation in the future.”

MORE NEWS LETTER OPINION AT THE LINKS BELOW. If you want to have your say, email [email protected] with your real name, address and number (the latter two will never be published).

CLICK HERE: Opinion: A tsunami of pain is headed NI’s way thanks to Covid lockdown

CLICK HERE: Doctor McCloskey has it right – problems far worse than Covid are coming our way thanks to lockdown

CLICK HERE: Christian school govenors as a bunch of bumbling bigots? Think again

CLICK HERE: Letter: We must be wary about handing over our freedoms to an inept government

CLICK HERE: Jamie Bryson: Life is not risk-free – we cannot surrender society to a new lockdown

CLICK HERE: Owen Polley: Recent Twitter pile-on shows social media has shrunk the range of ‘allowable’ views

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this story on our website. While I have your attention, I also have an important request to make of you.

With the coronavirus lockdown having a major impact on many of our advertisers — and consequently the revenue we receive — we are more reliant than ever on you taking out a digital subscription.

Subscribe to newsletter.co.uk and enjoy unlimited access to the best Northern Ireland and UK news and information online and on our app. With a digital subscription, you can read more than 5 articles, see fewer ads, enoy faster load times, and get access to exclusive newsletters and content. Visit https://www.newsletter.co.uk/subscriptions now to sign up.

Our journalism costs money and we rely on advertising, print and digital revenues to help to support them. By supporting us, we are able to support you in providing trusted, fact-checked content for this website.

Alistair Bushe

Editor