Mr. Glyn Roberts:

I thank the Chair for his question. We owe our retail staff a huge debt of gratitude. Only a few years ago, at the height of the pandemic, many retail staff were making sure that people the length and breadth of this island were able to get food and other essential products. Many of them were working in retail environments where there were no masks and no vaccines. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude. One of the continuing problems we have is the dreadful abuse retail staff got during the pandemic and since. It is something we are exploring with the PSNI. We would certainly like to see tougher sentencing for those who abuse, threaten or assault retail staff.

Regarding pay, it is a changing environment. Good retail staff are often hard to find. Many of our members are small independent retailers. They can be flexible and adaptable by giving people shifts, working around caring responsibilities and so on. We are seeing many more older people working and they want to work part time. It is a changing environment. Many of our members are family-owned businesses and dealing with the transition is an issue. This is not something unique to the farming community. In many family-owned businesses, the kids do not want to take on the business. That transition is a continuing challenge. We need to work out how we get more retail entrepreneurs to start up. That is why we want Northern Ireland to be the best place to start up and scale up a business. We are working actively with many new retail entrepreneurs who are beginning their business journey.

Many of our members are in agrifood businesses. We are actively working with our members to help them market their products to grow their share of business. We are working actively to help startup agrifood businesses with their route to market. One of our biggest success stories was Mash Direct one of whose first customers was one of our members in Killyleagh. From there it grew to be almost a global business. We are working with startup retail entrepreneurs and new agrifood businesses to get their product into our members' stores.