Simon Hamilton: There is a real fear now that businesses in Northern Ireland will be closed for months

Julian declares that he has a six, a five, a Jack, a four and an eight and shouts “I win”.

Bemused, Sandler says “What do you mean? I had a hand just like that and I didn’t win”, and Julian replies “Because I win”.

That’s what it has felt like for many in sectors like retail, hospitality and leisure.

They are shut down, Covid-19 cases rise, so they are kept closed because to open them might increase it more.

They reopen, cases stay the same, the finger of blame is pointed at them, so they are forced to close down again.

Shops, cafes, restaurants, pubs and hotels spend millions that many do not have to follow the guidance and make their premises safe for staff and customers and they are told it is not good enough.

Use outdoor space, instal hand sanitising stations, operate queuing systems, erect screens, wear face coverings.

They’ve done it all and what? It seems to make no difference whatsoever on whether or not the Stormont executive will let them trade.

It’s not so much ‘I win’ as ‘can’t win’. These sectors remain the executive’s ‘go to’ safety valve in spite of limited evidence that closing them causes any relief in infection rates.

The seriousness of the situation in our health service escapes nobody.

Hospitals and staff are under severe strain as the usual winter pressures begin to bite on top of having to deal with Covid patients. But equally we cannot ignore the fact that infection rates have remained stubbornly high even whilst many businesses have remained shut.

You cannot blame a pub that has only been open for about two weeks since March for the spread of Covid-19. That’s what is upsetting so many business owners — the sense, fuelled by some ill-considered comments, that they are indeed the villain.

That and the failure to clamp down on where the problem really lies. A senior PSNI officer described breaches of regulations by businesses to me and other business representatives as being “at the edges”, whilst it was still social gatherings like house parties that were their major cause for concern.

This is all taking its toll.

I’ve spoken to dozens upon dozens of business owners over the past nine months and they’re in despair.

I have nothing but admiration for anyone who has the courage to follow their dream and open a business. It is a tough, sometimes lonely slog and it has never been harder than it has this year.

I will never forget talking to one business owner who told me that they woke at 4am that day, couldn’t get back to sleep and got up at 5 o’clock and started working on what employees they could afford to furlough and what ones they’d have to let go.

Few of us know what that type of stress and strain is like and, as I know only too well, even fewer at Stormont where decisions that are directly impacting on businesses are being made.

What especially grates about the Boxing Day lockdown is that we were promised by ministers that they would pursue a different path.

They led us to believe that they wanted to follow another policy rather than lockdown after lockdown.

When they introduced the first of these so-called circuit breakers back in October, the first minister Arlene Foster wrote in this paper that “we cannot keep closing the country down” and “that strategy, designed to buy time, is in reality a failure”.

The first minister also stated that “every part of our society must adapt and learn to live with the virus”.

She wasn’t alone in seeking a new strategy. The deputy first minister Michelle O’Neill said that the first circuit breaker would give time to “strategically examine how we can move away from a cycle of lockdowns”.

The health minister Robin Swann commented too that repeated lockdowns were “not feasible”.

The first minister and deputy first minister both used strikingly similar language. Both expressed dissatisfaction with the policy of repeated lockdowns. Both pointed in the direction of a different approach.

Yet here we are again, going round and round and round in a cycle of lockdowns. Many are now questioning the degree of seriousness of those statements. Looking back at them now, you would be forgiven for thinking they were nothing more than warm words.

We will soon say a welcome goodbye to 2020. Instead of the usual hope that a new year can bring, many businesses are staring into an extremely uncertain time. Christmas is curtailed if not cancelled,

Northern Ireland is on the cusp of another lengthy lockdown and, with a new strain of the virus emerging, there is a real fear that we could see businesses closed for months. The light at the end of the tunnel offered by the vaccines now seems a very long way off.

Within weeks, days maybe, I fear, we will hear of more business closures and many more job losses. Lockdown after lockdown is doing permanent perhaps irreparable damage to city and town centres.

Businesses are sitting with thousands of pounds worth of stock and no way to sell it, yet the Executive has, in many cases, failed to compensate some at all for the previous lockdown never mind this new one.

The big question for ministers is this — are they capable of developing another strategy that avoids, to use their own words, further failure and ensure that this lockdown is the last?

If the executive is unable or unwilling to change course and implement a more robust compliance regime, a better communications strategy and try tools like mass testing that could all combine to allow businesses to reopen and remain open, then be honest with us and compensate us properly or else we will most certainly heap a jobs tragedy on top of a health one.

• Simon Hamilton is chief executive of Belfast Chamber

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