Retailers welcome govt call for extended N.Ireland grace period

British Retail Consortium (BRC) on Tuesday welcomed a call from the UK government for the European Union to extend a post-Brexit grace period for Northern Ireland.

Senior minister Michael Gove said there were serious problems with the post-Brexit arrangements for trade with Northern Ireland and called for an extension of the grace periods currently relaxing some rules.

“We are pleased the government has recognised the challenge facing supermarkets and other retailers operating in Northern Ireland,” said Andrew Opie, trade policy advisor at the BRC.

The BRC’s Northern Ireland director Aodhán Connolly also welcomed the move.

“Michael Gove is absolutely right – we do need an extension to the grace period to ensure that hard-pressed NI families are not affected by further disruption in the availability of goods,” he said.

Northern Ireland shares Britain’s only land border in the EU and has become a focus for post-Brexit trade difficulties, with goods flowing in from Britain subject to expensive and time-consuming extra checks.

Gove’s comments showed ministers are now taking delays getting goods from Britain to Northern Ireland more seriously, after the government initially called them teething problems.

“They are significant issues which bear on the lives of people in Northern Ireland, which do need to be resolved,” Gove told parliament.

He said the EU needed to work with Britain fast and determinedly to resolve issues in the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol.

“We do need to make sure that supermarkets and other traders can continue, as they are at the moment, to be able to supply consumers with the goods that they need,” said Gove, who negotiated the deal on Northern Ireland with the EU.

Supermarkets selling into the territory have three months’ grace to adapt systems. But some Northern Irish outlets have had shortages of fresh goods usually imported from Britain, and fear the situation could worsen.