Business hopes for a Christmas miracle fizzle out on fears over level five restrictions

The recommendation of top health advisers to move to level five has raised fears about the Christmas season

Budget gifts were bestowed upon hospitality and tourism and on live entertainment. Picture: Larry Cummins

Talking about Christmas shopping in early October would usually lead to grumbling and cribbing about the festivities coming earlier every year.

This year, however, as the queues outside Smyths Toy Superstores showed, many are starting gift shopping out of fear that the polar express is headed straight for a level five lockdown.

For many businesses in the region, the eve of the budget day was a bit like Christmas eves of past, hoping about what Santa would deliver in the morning.

Business owners hoped Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe would play Santa. 

Gifts were bestowed upon hospitality and tourism and on live entertainment. 

The Vat hospitality rate was cut and there were funds for the most exposed sectors, while the waiver on local authority and commercial rates was extended. 

The Government’s star gift was the Covid-19 restrictions support scheme. 

The plight of Cork and Shannon airports was also recognised but much like finding a doll under the tree when you’d asked for a pink car, the general feeling from business owners was that what had been delivered was not what they had wanted most.

As Cork publican and restaurateur Sean McCarthy said, “a Vat reduction on zero sales is zero”. 

Many had hoped for an even longer extension to the waiver on local authority and commercial rates. 

Many owners wanted former payment levels restored under the new employment wage subsidy scheme and the pandemic unemployment payment, as fears about staff layoffs loom large. 

Oliver Moloney, owner of the Hook & Ladder cafe franchise in Limerick, Clare, and Waterford, said the weekly, higher payments of the wage subsidy scheme were the “single biggest thing that kept us all alive” under strict Covid-19 restrictions in the spring. 

Before the budget, Bernadette Randles of Dromhall Hotel in Killarney had worried: “I hope they have looked after the people, because we won’t be able to keep doing it.” 

But the wage subsidy payments were not increased, and while Mr Donohoe said there would be no “cliff-edge”, it remains unclear what will replace it at the end of March. 

The news that Ryanair was to shut its bases at Cork and Shannon airports this winter, and that Aer Lingus was continuing with a similar review of its winter flights, hit hard.       

At Shannon, passenger numbers were down by over 90% in September from a year earlier. 

Cork Airport handled fewer than 500 flights last month, compared to more than 2,000 in September 2019.

The gravity of Ryanair’s decision cannot be underestimated in its effects on the broader economy and connectivity of Cork and Shannon. 

Neil Grant, who runs Celtic Ross Hotel in West Cork, said occupancy rates were in the mid to high 80s last October. It's at 30% or 40% this year. 

That business we're missing is UK tour operators that were flying their guests into Cork Airport. 

The passengers stay in local hotels, eat in local restaurants and cafes, and use local guides to visit local attractions.

Many business owners had accepted that the region’s airports, hotels, restaurants, and pubs would be a lot quieter this Christmas but they now fear what any prolonged lockdown could mean for Ryanair flights restarting in March. 

The recommendation of top health advisers to move to level five restrictions has raised fears about the Christmas season.

The Restaurants Association of Ireland campaigned for a so-called circuit breaker lockdown, saying a short, sharp lockdown could allow businesses to reopen in time. 

Christmas hopes for business this year are pinned on the development of a vaccine early next year. 

It seems Covid-19 has claimed this one.