Three nights of violence and unrest in Northern Ireland have "effectively wrecked" tourism for the next two years, the head of the Northern Ireland Tourist Board warned yesterday.
Mr Roy Baillie said the trouble had robbed the region of its tourism potential for this year and next. He said the tourism industry would be left reeling and jobs would be lost.
"There will be a huge loss of confidence in Northern Ireland as a tourist destination and an investment location. The reality is that this will cost jobs," he said.
The deputy director of the CBI in Northern Ireland, Ms Deirdre Stewart, said the violence would also have the effect of making it more difficult to get foreign companies to invest in the region.
"It is quite damaging, it does not make the job of attracting inward investment any easier and it makes it harder for the Industrial Development Board to get companies to even consider Northern Ireland as a possible investment site," she said.
The North's Deputy First Minister, Mr Seamus Mallon, called for people to "draw back and think hard" in their response to the ongoing Drumcree stand-off. "Let's not throw it all away by driving a wedge through our community at a time when we are starting to build peace and heal the hurt that many have suffered needlessly in our past. This is a time when we need to remain cool and calm in our response to the rising tension around us.," he said.
The Northern Ireland Secretary, Mr Peter Mandelson, said that "bully boys" staging violent protests in the wake of the banned Orange Order march on the Garvaghy Road would not be allowed to have their own way.
"This is not legitimate protest. This is not what the ordinary decent Orangemen want. This is pure thuggery. Petrol bombs, fireworks, ball-bearings and acid squirted at police - those are not the weapons of democrats. They are the weapons of the bully and the bully will not have his way," Mr Mandelson told BBC Radio 4. The former peace-talks chairman, Senator George Mitchell, who was back in Belfast to award £600,000 sterling to seven charities, said there was "absolutely no justification" for the current violence.
The Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, described the situation as "hugely dangerous" and said the onus was on civic unionism to raise its voice against what was happening. "The Orange Order simply can't distance itself from this," he said.
The SDLP MLA for north Belfast, one of the areas worst affected by the disturbances, Mr Alban Maginness, said he was deeply concerned at the situation. "I am deeply concerned about these protests throughout north Belfast where tensions are already fraught and community relations are strained. This atmosphere has struck fear into the whole community, Catholics and Protestants," he said.
The Alliance Party's chief whip, Mr David Ford, blamed the Ulster Defence Association for a gun attack which occurred in west Belfast last night and called on Mr Mandelson to clarify whether this constituted a breach of the ceasefire.
The DUP Lord Mayor of Belfast, Mr Sammy Wilson, said while people had a right to protest they had no right to destroy property and businesses in their own areas.
"No cause is advanced by burning and wrecking. It is enough that the pan-nationalist front and the UUP are destroying the police, without people who call themselves Protestants joining in through wholesale attacks on the RUC," he said.
Earlier, the Northern Ireland Security Minister, Mr Adam Ingram, said the "disgraceful" scenes of violence must end.
During a backbench debate on this year's annual report of the Parades Commission initiated by the UUP MP, Mr William Thompson, Mr Ingram said Northern Ireland was experiencing "regrettably familiar" scenes of sectarian intimidation. But if rioters believed their actions could change the Parades Commission's decision, they were "very much mistaken". .
Mr Thompson insisted that since the establishment of the Parades Commission the situation had "got worse" and there were now more contentious parades and more changes to routes.