Major business body urges Northern Ireland consumers to ‘be responsible’ and not hoard goods over coronavirus fears

Aodhan Connolly of the Northern Ireland Retail Consortium made the call as reports came in of people stockpiling goods.

For instance, yesterday in the Tesco supermarket at the heart of Belfast city centre the shelves of the toilet roll section were running low on supplies.

In addition, signs on the cleaning product shelves limited customers to buying five of each item, maximum.

Mr Connolly, whose organisation represents about 90 major retailers (including Sainsbury’s, Asda, Argos and B&Q) said it was “too early” to tell how significantly footfall in shops has changed as a result of the virus – but said there has been a notable rise in consumers getting goods delivered to their homes.

When it comes to stockpiling he said people should “buy responsible”.

He added: “Certain people, carers or the elderly, may only shop once a week and we want to make sure everybody has access to the products they need.

“The big message to shoppers is that retailers are doing the hard work so they don’t have to – we’re making sure we’re able to get products in store so there’s not any real need to be stocking up.”

Translink, meanwhile, when asked if fewer people are using buses and trains at present, said only that it has seen a drop in the numbers of people using its airport services.

This could be related to the collapse of Flybe, which flew from Belfast City airport – but is also understood to apply to routes serving Belfast International Airport, which was unaffected by the collapse (but which has seen flights cancelled due to Covid-19).

Meanwhile, last night, Omniplex Cinemas (which has 15 locations across Northern Ireland) said it was instituting what it called “in-cinema seat separation”.

This basically means that “every second cinema seat will be unoccupied in a checkerboard pattern”.