‘Numerous’ supermarket products unavailable at end of North’s grace period

"Numerous" products will be unavailable and there will be a "far greater proportion of empty shelves" when the grace period for supermarkets in Northern Ireland ends on March 31st, the North's Minister for Agriculture has warned.

While the North produced plenty of meat and potatoes, the DUP MLA Edwin Poots told the North's Assembly on Monday, "you can have your roast beef dinner but you might not have any Bisto on it . . . you mightn't have a nice bit of trifle after it either because you don't have any jelly".

Mr Poots also stood by his claim last week that there would be a disruption in the supply of food to schools, hospitals and prisons, telling the Stormont Assembly that this was backed up by the official minutes of the meeting with suppliers.

“Some people were particularly disingenuous last week when I did raise it,” he said. “That was what the minute of the meeting describes. Not my minute, the official minute of the meeting, so the BBC and other media outlets and indeed other politicians may seek to undermine what I said and try to create some discrepancy in terms of the veracity of it. The minute is there.”

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At the time the Alliance Party MP Stephen Farry accused Mr Poots of "scaremongering on steroids". Neither the Department of Health nor of Education said it had concerns over major disruption to the food supply to hospitals or schools.

Call for extension

The customs and regulatory border in the Irish Sea – which came into effect under the terms of the Northern Ireland protocol once the Brexit transition period ended – has led to problems with some deliveries from Britain to Northern Ireland and a shortage of some goods in supermarkets.

Industry bodies in the North are among those who have called for an extension to the grace periods and certainty over what will happen when the initial light-touch approach comes to an end.

The North’s parties continue to be at odds over where the responsibility for the disruption lies, with the DUP blaming the Northern Ireland protocol and Sinn Féin, the SDLP and the Alliance Party saying responsibility lies with Brexit and with the DUP, who supported it.

“Had there been no Brexit, there would have been no protocol, simple as that,” the SDLP MLA Patsy McGlone said.

The Minister for the Economy, the DUP's Diane Dodds, said she was trying to mitigate some of the difficulties, but the Irish government needed to "step up and take some responsibility for the chaos that there is in the port in Dublin . . . we need to see that chaos at the port of Dublin sorted out."

Ms Dodds said she had also taken part in talks with the UK Cabinet Minister, Michael Gove, regarding the import of steel from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.

It could face tariffs of up to 25 per cent because it is deemed by the EU to be “at risk” of entering the Single Market, she said.

Ms Dodds said she envisaged a statement from the UK government on this in the near future, saying she was “encouraged that, following our representations, the [UK] government know that this is a huge issue for Northern Ireland and we need to see a resolution.”