Coronavirus: Restaurant owners angered by long shopping queues - BBC News
Shoppers lined Belfast's streets days before Northern Ireland's non-essential shops shut for two weeks.
Restaurant owners have expressed anger at Stormont's approach to Covid-19 rules after large numbers of weekend shoppers lined Belfast's streets.

It comes ahead of non-essential shops in Northern Ireland being ordered to shut for two weeks from Friday.

Restaurateur Bob McCoubrey said the scenes were "hard to accept", while pubs and restaurants remain closed.

The chief medical officer said there was a greater risk of spreading infection in hospitality settings.

BBC News NI has contacted the Executive Office for a comment.

Chief Medical Officer Michael McBride said: "In restaurants and in pubs, individuals are engaged in different interaction, they are closer together for a longer period of time and the risk is therefore greater."

Cafes, bars and restaurants closed on 17 October but shops, including those deemed non-essential, have been allowed to remain open during that time.

Last Friday, hospitality businesses without an alcohol licence were allowed to reopen, but they must close again along with all non-essential retail at the end of the week.

Mr McCoubrey, who owns the Mourne Seafood Bar in Belfast's city centre, said he could not understand why his restaurant had to stay closed while shops were still open.

He retweeted the photo of a long queue outside Primark in Castle Street on Saturday, with a message that read: "Hard to accept pictures like this when we can't even use our outside area."

"We're just angry", he later told BBC News NI.

"I'm very frustrated. We've been closed for five weeks and we're no further forward in terms of the infection or the pressure on hospitals."

While Mr McCoubrey did not see the queue outside Primark on Saturday, he said he had seen similar queues in recent days.

Shoppers lined both sides of the street outside Primark on Saturday afternoon

The photo outside Primark was taken by Caítlin Webb at about 14:00 GMT on Saturday. She sent it privately to a relative via WhatsApp and it later appeared on Twitter and Facebook, where it has since been widely shared.

The 21-year-old told BBC News NI the queue began on one side of Castle Street, snaked up as far as the Hercules Bar, and then continued along the other pavement into the shop.

Ms Webb said she briefly joined the queue herself, but left after about 10 minutes as she was concerned by a lack of social distancing.

Primark said: "Nothing matters more to us than the safety and wellbeing of our employees and customers."

"As we re-open our stores in Northern Ireland in line with government advice, we continue to have extensive health and safety measures in place including a strict social distancing protocol and limits on the number of customers allowed in store," a Primark spokesperson added.

"Dedicated employees and security staff are on hand to help ensure these measures are adhered to.

"We continue to closely follow all safety advice from government across all our stores."

Another restaurateur described the scenes as an "absolute scandal" and claimed the situation had been created by the Stormont Executive "with your inability to govern our country".

Stevie Higginson, who owns two restaurants in Lisburn and Ballynahinch, said the current rules were a "joke".

"I can't serve 30 guests inside, socially-distanced with sanitiser on every table, staff wearing masks, screens up," he said.

He said restaurants had track-and-trace systems in place "for every customer", and service would be limited to a maximum of six people from the same household at each table if they were allowed to reopen.

The chief medical officer said: "The retail sector are putting in place measures to restrict the number of people in their stores to maintain flows in a safe way to minimise contact between individuals indoors.

"The consequence of limiting the number of people indoors is that there may be, where there is demand for a particular retail outlet, there may be individuals outside waiting to come in."

"It is also important that those queues are managed appropriately, socially distanced, but they are outside and we need to bear that in mind," Dr McBride told BBC NI's Radio Ulster's Nolan Show on Monday,

NI's Chief Scientific Adviser Prof Ian Young said that within the retail sector the interactions of people tended to:

It comes as the executive's plans to curtail church services due to Covid-19 have been criticised by a series of MLAs.

Paul Givan the DUP MLA for Lagan Valley said the decision put people of faith in a conflicted place.

Mr Givan wondered whether some large churches could remain open with social distancing in place.

There was "real anger" that churches were closed, according to DUP MLA William Humphrey said.

SDLP MLA Justin McNulty said he was worried about what effect closure would have on the mental health of church goers.

The Health Minister Robin Swann said such decisions were "not taken easily".

Mr Swann said he would be in favour of churches opening for private worship if "social distancing is followed".