BELFAST BRIEFING:I N A town that is no stranger to tragedy, it will be business as usual today – but there will be little or no heart for it in Omagh.
Yesterday, shops began the day normally with shutters pulled up to begin trading on Market Street. Firms in Omagh Enterprise Centre, just a mile from the town centre, switched on the lights and began to answer phones and take orders. But the business as usual facade failed to hide the lingering sadness that betrayed the grief which once again unites the business community in Omagh.
No one in the town was thinking yet about the potential economic fallout from the murder of a young policeman on Saturday. Instead, as local businessman Peter McBride said, it was the “human cost” of the tragedy that mattered to the business community at this time.
McBride’s Spar group employs more than 240 people across seven stores, one of which is located half a mile from the bomb blast that killed 25-year-old Constable Ronan Kerr.
McBride, who is Omagh Chamber of Commerce’s businessman of the year, said: “We are all just shocked and horrified about this and all anyone can think of is his family.
“It is a backwards step for Northern Ireland – local businesses are stunned. It is just depressing and pathetic.”
The president of Omagh Chamber of Commerce said there was a sense of “disbelief” that the Co Tyrone town was the centre of yet another heartbreaking tragedy.
In 1998, 29 people were killed when a Real IRA car bomb exploded in the town.
Loraine Griffin, president of the local chamber, said there were real concerns that the attack on Constable Kerr would create a sense of fear in the town.
“It is a terrible tragedy for the Kerr family and we don’t want this type of thing here. We don’t want to go back. We don’t want people to be nervous about coming to visit and shop in Omagh.
“It has been a difficult few months for businesses and some in the local business community had been struggling. We want the future to be about investment and jobs for Omagh, not this, it is so depressing,” Griffin said.
In recent years, Omagh District Council has been trying to encourage more tourists and visitors to stay and spend in the county. A £10.5 million town centre regeneration scheme was completed in the last couple of months and it had been hoped that the project would help to boost the local economy.
Omagh, like many rural towns across the North, has been hit hard by the economic downturn and experienced a big rise in the number of local people searching for work.
There are few major employers in the area and a noticeable lack of inward investors choosing to locate there.
One of the few that did set up in the town, the Taiwanese disk manufacturer Ritek, changed its mind and pulled 85 jobs out of its Tyrone factory nearly six years ago.
According to the Omagh Chamber of Commerce, it is vital for the town and the area’s economic future that it can attract new investors.
“Our local business community is very strong, but it is mainly made up of small to medium-sized companies. We need to encourage big companies to come to Omagh and create new jobs for local people,” Griffin said.
There are many in the wider Northern Ireland business community who will question if the North will suffer economic consequences as a result of the attack.
Just last month the US economic envoy to Northern Ireland, Declan Kelly, hosted a business briefing on the North in Washington. Kelly spoke warmly about the opportunities for transatlantic trade and investment in Northern Ireland.
In the past, Kelly has stressed that dissident violence must not be allowed to derail the North’s economic potential.
“Prosperity goes hand-in-hand with peace and progress, and the very small few who are stuck in the past cannot stand in the way, and will not be allowed to do so,” he said then.
His message is still valid today and nowhere more so than in Omagh.
