Northern Ireland Independent Retail Trade Association (NIIRTA) chief executive, Glyn Roberts, said if the crisis led to a return to Direct Rule from Westminster, a chance to win powers to cut corporation tax could be \u201clost for a generation\u201d.<\/p>\n
The crisis arose on Monday after Sinn F\u00e9in withdrew support for a crucial welfare reform bill, accusing the DUP of reneging on commitments made during crunch talks before Christmas.<\/p>\n
First minister, DUP leader Peter Robinson, labelled Sinn Fein\u2019s response “dishonourable and ham-fisted”.<\/p>\n
Responding to the crisis on Tuesday, Glynn Roberts said: “So far this week has brought nothing but bad news.<\/p>\n
“We would urge all parties to work through this crisis and ensure the Stormont House Agreement is fully implemented.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe price of failure will be Direct Rule and the huge opportunity of Corporation Tax devolution lost for a generation.”<\/p>\n
Should Friday\u2019s strike action by Unite and GMB unions go ahead, no bus or train services will run.<\/p>\n
Unions Unison and Nipsa have also voted in favour of industrial action.<\/p>\n
Defending the strike, GMB regional organiser Michael Mulholland, said: \u201cGMB require full transparency on the detail of the Stormont House Agreement and what further impacts these will have.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, Mr Roberts called the action \u201cill-timed\u201d and \u201cmisjudged\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the very last thing Northern Ireland needs at this time,” he said.<\/p>\n
“With public transport shut down on Friday our members will face severe difficulty -how will their staff and customers get to their shops and town centres?\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Roberts said local trade unions were \u201cout of touch and out of ideas”, and called for them to \u201cproperly engage\u201d with Government and the business community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A crisis at Stormont and looming public sector strikes could \u201cgrind Northern Ireland\u2019s economy to a halt\u201d, a leading NI business association has said. Northern<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":1856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[10],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/neighbourhoodretailer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Parliament_Buildings_Stormont-e1426001430200.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neighbourhoodretailer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1855"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neighbourhoodretailer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neighbourhoodretailer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neighbourhoodretailer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neighbourhoodretailer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1855"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/neighbourhoodretailer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1862,"href":"https:\/\/neighbourhoodretailer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1855\/revisions\/1862"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neighbourhoodretailer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neighbourhoodretailer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neighbourhoodretailer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neighbourhoodretailer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}