Coronavirus: Poots warns to beware those ‘hyping up’ trouble over food industry and praises ‘infinite’ contribution of workers

This week has seen workers in meat plants stage protests over Covid-19 “social distancing”, and minister Edwin Poots tonight said it is vital such facilities keep running.

He was speaking duing tonight’s instalment of the regular Executive press conferences, setting out how Northern Ireland’s government is handling the pandemic.

Referring to the walk-outs, Mr Poots said: “What is absolutely important is that we keep this processing going because if we don’t keep the processing going we won’t have the food on our shelves.

“We won’t have the animals coming off the farm, consequently that will create an animal health crisis on the farms which could very quickly become a public health crisis. So I can’t stress enough how important it is we keep our food processing sector going.”

He added that “for those people outside who are seeking to hype things up and make matters worse – we need to be calming things down”.

He said workers in that sector are “doing an infinitely great job of great value to all the people of NI”.

He also said his department is letting health trusts use accommodation at the CAFRE Greenmount campus and the Enniskillen campus, saying that “we have offered the health service the use of laboratories for testing [and] we have provided as many ventilators as we can”.

Meanwhile finance minister Conor Murphy confirmed a “significant” order of personal protective equipment, placed with China.

He has agreed a joint order with Dublin, but declined to say how much equipment has been ordered or when it will arrive.