Glyn Roberts, chief executive of NIIRTA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nHowever, NIIRTA chief executive Glyn Roberts, who had contributed to the Airport Commission report during its five-year long preparations, said the increased connectivity was \u201ccrucial\u201d for Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs retailers, our members rely on inbound tourism, a buoyant economy and an efficient supply chain with access to producers across the globe,\u201d he said. \u201cFor any region, air connectivity is vital to securing those needs and for Northern Ireland air connectivity is more crucial still.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Roberts said Northern Ireland required frequent access to a globally competitive hub airport, and that an extra runway would be pivotal to that access.<\/p>\n
\u201cCurrently, that connection is with Heathrow airport and the proposed third runway will give greater future certainty of that vital air link for the economy of Northern Ireland,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A report recommending a third runway for the UK\u2019s biggest airport, Heathrow, has been welcomed by the body representing Northern Ireland retailers. The Northern Ireland<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":2610,"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\/07\/Hathrow.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neighbourhoodretailer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2609"}],"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=2609"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/neighbourhoodretailer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2616,"href":"https:\/\/neighbourhoodretailer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2609\/revisions\/2616"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neighbourhoodretailer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neighbourhoodretailer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neighbourhoodretailer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neighbourhoodretailer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}