Still no clarity from PSNI on cross-border shopping breaches

It is a concern that is shared by some MLAs who represent the Fermanagh town.

Yet we still have not had so much as clarification from the PSNI whether they know of such activity (said in fact to be common, which is plausible in a time when the pound remains so weak against the euro) and if so what they are doing about it.

It might sound mean spirited to continue to seek clarity on this matter, but in fact it is a simple request and it must be resolved for a number of obvious reasons.

For six weeks now people across Northern Ireland have made huge sacrifices demanded of them by government to help stop Covid-19. This has been done with huge goodwill and little complaint, despite the personal and financial ruin it has brought to millions of people — literally millions, with a staggering six million people across the UK having been put on furlough, which in effect means temporarily losing their job.

Many people have been stopped by police as they make journeys, often perhaps wrong journeys made innocently, given the inevitable confusion about what is and is not possible. The PSNI have had a tricky role to play, particularly given the political mixed messages from Sinn Fein, which has demanded the hardest possible lockdown but then seemed ambivalent about making decisions such as on police powers.

On these pages Rev Norman Hamilton wrote about PSNI over zealousness, and a DUP councillor, opposite, does too.

The PSNI have rightly stopped people within NI driving 10+ miles to go to a preferred shop. But it is at least an outrageous breach of the spirit of social distancing for anyone to travel a mininimum of 11 miles from the border to Enniskillen.

Amid so massive public sacrifice, such travel must be stopped regardless of whether it upsets republican sensitivities, in the same way the Garda rightly stopped NI people at the border going to holiday homes in Donegal.