Big freeze costs economy €600m
According to a survey of over 400 companies carried out by IBEC, the cold weather has had a “very negative impact” on businesses.
The business group estimated the cost as:
- Absenteeism: €170m per week.
- Loss of retail sales: €130m per week.
- Loss to other service businesses: €200m per week.
- Loss of production in manufacturing: €130m per week.
Late arrival of staff was one of the main issues, with 83% of businesses surveyed either having major or slight difficulties in this area.
Over half the respondents had difficulties either delivering goods to customers or having goods delivered to their own businesses, while almost 70% had difficulties in travelling to their own customers.
Almost 60% experienced problems in relation to sales.
IBEC stressed that much of the cost will be recovered over the coming weeks as business returns to normal, particularly given that firms have significant spare capacity. Most of the ‘costs’ are actually sales/production postponed rather than sales/production lost permanently.
However, it warned that many retailers have experienced a significant fall in sales which will not be recovered.
IBEC’s director of policy Brendan Butler praised the response of Government and local authorities to the crisis and pointed out that businesses should pull together to ensure costs are minimised.
The survey found over half of businesses rate the response to the adverse weather conditions as good or very good at both national and local government level.
This is a significant improvement on how business rated the response last January, when few businesses rated the national government (16%) and local authority (31%) response as good or very good.
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