More than 200 hospitality firms have closed in Northern Ireland this year says trade group.
Food to Go Association repeats call for north to be used for a reduced VAT pilot.
A group representing the north’s takeaway industry has claimed more than 200 hospitality businesses have already closed in Northern ireland this year under financial pressure.
By Ryan McAleer
June 03, 2026 at 4:29pm BST
More than 200 hospitality businesses have closed in Northern Ireland since January, an industry body representing takeaway businesses has claimed.
Calling on the UK Government to use the north as a pilot region for a lower rate of VAT for the hospitality trade, the Northern Ireland Food to Go Association (NIFTGA) said around 40 firms a month are closing in 2026 under unprecedented cost pressures and increasing competition from across the border.
The call to lower the 20% VAT rate in Northern Ireland comes as the Republic prepares to cut VAT for hospitality from 13.5% to 9% from July 1.
Designed as a government intervention to alleviate some of the pressure on smaller firms from rising energy and staff costs, the initiative is being targeted at the Republic’s restaurants, cafés, takeaway outlets and hairdressers, but will not include alcohol or hotels.
Certain businesses across the north will benefit from a temporary cut in VAT to 5% over the summer following an announcement by Chancellor Rachel Reeves last month.
But the two month haircut will be limited to tickets for theme parks, zoos and museums.
A new report from Trade NI presented at Westminster last month proposed a five-year VAT pilot for hospitality and tourism.
Trade NI includes Hospitality Ulster, which maintains VAT is one of the most effective levers available to stimulate demand, drive footfall and protect jobs.
NIFTGA’s chief executive Michael Henderson said the case has never been stronger for using Northern Ireland as a test case for VAT reform.
He said the gulf in the rate of VAT for hospitality on the island means businesses in border areas face the added challenge of competition with their counterparts in the Republic.
“More than 200 hospitality businesses have closed their doors this year alone,” he said.
“Many of these are independent operators serving local communities, employing local people and supporting local supply chains.
“The reality is that rising labour costs, National Insurance increases, energy bills, food inflation and business rates pressures are becoming increasingly difficult for businesses to absorb.
“We cannot continue asking local businesses to compete with one hand tied behind their back.”
The Economy Minister Caoimhe Archibald is supportive of the industry’s calls.
In a joint letter to the Treasury, penned with Finance Minister John O’Dowd, she urged the Chancellor to consider a reduced VAT pilot scheme for hospitality within the north.
She said the summer reduction for tourist venues “does not address the longstanding VAT disparity faced by our broader local hospitality industry compared to the south”.
She added: “Targeted adjustments to VAT can be made when the political will is there and I urge the Chancellor to consider options for more meaningful and lasting reform.”
The foreword to the document on proposals for Stormont reform, ‘Building Better Politics/Ag Tógáil Polaitíochta Feabhsaithe’, by Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald.
In May, 2026, we witnessed seismic elections results across Scotland and Wales. We now have three pro-independence First Ministers – here in the north of Ireland, in Scotland and in Wales.
Constitutional change is very much on the political agenda. Partition has failed all of the people of this island.
While our Assembly and Ministerial team continue to do all they can to deliver for ordinary people in the here and now, Sinn Féin believes that the best option for all the people of this island is a new, united Ireland within the European Union.
The constitutional referendum set out in the Good Friday Agreement needs to happen. In cooperation and partnership with the pro-independence movements in Wales and Scotland, Sinn Féin will continue to make the realisation of that referendum a political priority in the time ahead – while also working day-in and day-out to deliver for communities, families and workers.
Delivering for people in the here and now is of course a challenge, given the unusual political structure that exists in the north of Ireland. Delivery is frustratingly slow. I understand and share that frustration. We have to do things better.
Reform of the political institutions is clearly necessary but it will, unfortunately, not resolve the fundamental problem that some parties remain opposed to power-sharing, to equality and to the principles of the Good Friday Agreement.
Reform cannot address the fundamental difficulty of underfunding and an austerity agenda imposed on us from Westmininster. But we can improve the operation of our political institutions to deliver better. As a result of the inbuilt veto over Ministerial appointments by the two biggest parties, the Executive has faced repeated collapse with progress and day-to-day government frustrated. It is our view that this is a fundamental flaw that should be addressed. Given our difficult past and our divided politics, power-sharing must, of course, be maintained and resolutely defended.
Power-sharing is a core principle of the Good Friday Agreement, but the veto over the operation of the political institutions is a corruption of that principle. The work of the Assembly and Executive Review Committee (AERC) is the established and appropriate vehicle for addressing these important issues. The Sinn Féin members of the Assembly and Executive Review Committee are fully engaged in this essential work and will engage positively on proposals, views and suggestion for properly considered and researched reform that are meaningful and effective. And, crucially, proposed reform must protect the fundamental principles of power sharing and the Good Friday Agreement.
Sinn Féin are now bringing forward important and consequential reforms, reforms that will ensure the Assembly and the Executive can continue to function even in the context of political or economic crises.
Crucially, we propose no single party should have the power to block or collapse the Assembly.
In this document, Sinn Féin has identified changes that would have an immediate stabilising and normalising impact. We are not ruling out other proposals. In fact, Sinn Féin is very open to working constructively with other parties to advance these and other credible and effective proposals that can improve the operation and effectiveness of our political institutions.
O’Sullivans in West Cork break Guinness World Record with huge clan gathering.
The June Bank Holiday reunion in Castletownbere drew O’Sullivans from around the world and set a new Guinness World Record for the largest gathering of people sharing the same surname.
Jun 03, 2026
Sullivans united at Guinness World Record event in Cork.Sullivans united at Guinness World Record event in Cork.
More than 1,800 O’Sullivans and Sullivans gathered in Castletownbere over the June Bank Holiday weekend, turning a long-planned clan reunion into a new Guinness World Records title. The West Cork crowd surpassed the previous mark of 1,488, set by the Gallaghers in Letterkenny, Co Donegal, in 2007.
The long-awaited event brought the O’Sullivan name back to the Beara Peninsula, which organizers describe as the ancestral home of the O’Sullivan Beare clan. What began as a world record attempt became a wider celebration of family, history, and place.
Before the final count, participants were asked to prove their connection to the surname with identification at Beara Community School and were then issued numbered cards for the tally. Guinness officials later confirmed a final total of 1,848 after more than 3,000 people had registered, with poor weather keeping some away.
Guinness World Records adjudicator Pravel Patel broke the great news from a podium on the pitch, declaring: “The current record stands at 1,488 so with a total of 1,848, you are the Guinness record title holders for the largest gathering of people with the same surname. Congratulations, you are all officially amazing.”
Organizer Jim O’Sullivan said, “It was an achievement to get people down here from all over Ireland because we are peripheral, but got people from the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and America too, so we’re very happy.
“We made it – I don’t know how long we’ll hang on to the record – we’ll get a week out of it anyway I suppose,” he told the Irish Times.
“Somebody else might take it on next year so we might have to come back and do it all again next year but we’ll enjoy the record for the moment, for sure.”
Fianna Fáil’s for Cork South West Christopher O’Sullivan expressed his pride at breaking the world record. He told the Irish Independent, “Very proud to be an O’Sullivan. Thank you to all the Ó’Shuileabháns, Ní Shúileabháns, Sullivans and O’Sullivans who made the world record possible. Huge gratitude also to the organizers. The O’Sullivan motto is ‘we stick together’. In Castletownbere it really felt like being part of one big family.”
Independent councillor Finbarr Harrington spoke about the O’Sullivans/Sullivans rich history in the Beara Peninsula.
He said “Their story is one of resilience, leadership, and a strong connection to a place, with the legacy of the O’Sullivan/Sullivan clan continuing to inspire pride both at home and across the world.”
“Breaking a world record that had been held by the Gallaghers since 2007 is an extraordinary accomplishment. It was a memorable day that will be remembered for many years to come. The gathering is a fitting tribute to the strength of family ties, the importance of heritage, and the lasting bond that unites O’Sullivans and Sullivans wherever they may live,” he added.
The weekend had been billed as more than a record bid, with lectures, guided tours, music, Irish dance, pub gatherings, and a time capsule ceremony all part of the program. IrishCentral reported ahead of the event that celebrations would also include family-friendly activities across the peninsula, and official tourism listings described the gathering as a homecoming for the clan.
In 1996, Frank McCourt, a retired high school English teacher who was born in Brooklyn but raised in Limerick, became a literary sensation with the publication of his memoir, “Angela’s Ashes.” The book begins with these lines: “My father and mother should have stayed in New York where they met and married and where I was born. Instead, they returned to Ireland…”
The year before “Angela’s Ashes” was published, Brendan Loonam, a high school English teacher who was born in Banagher, Co. Offaly, but raised in the Bronx, made his literary debut when the late, lamented Thomas Davis Irish Players produced his autobiographical play, “Gone Away with a Sailor.” The play begins with these lines: “I was on my second ramble through Jane Eyre, languishing, you might say, when I got the word about the job.” The allusion to a novel whose plot includes a marriage that began happily on one side of the Atlantic before descending into rancor and madness on the other side subtly, almost imperceptibly, foreshadows the tale to come. For the theme of Loonam’s play could be summarized by inverting McCourt’s opening lines: Loonam’s mother and father should have stayed in Ireland where they met and married and where the playwright was born. Instead they emigrated to America.
No other work of Irish-American literature I know uses the painful process of chain migration as its dramatic core. Through a lyrical set of intertwined monologues of the mother (“She”) and father (“He”), the play narrates the Larkin family gradually disintegrating and struggling to regenerate itself in the new environs of the Bronx. This narrative reveals the terrible costs of a particular piecemeal approach to emigration: first to depart are the father, Tom, and the oldest son, Sean; then the only daughter, Annie; then the next son, Peter; then the next son, Tosh; and finally, the mother, Kitty, and the youngest son, Kieran.
Both Loonam’s play and McCourt’s book end in New York. In “Angela’s Ashes,” that ending is framed as Frank’s escape from the poverty of Limerick and the dysfunction of his own family; he has returned to the promised land of America, a birthright his parent’s reverse immigration stole from him. As such, “Angela’s Ashes” is ultimately a comedy, whereas “Gone Away with Sailor” offer the audience no such happy ending. In his penultimate lines, He/ the father/ Tom Larkin confesses: “Sure what’s the use? The bed could be as wide as the Atlantic Ocean for all the space that’s between us now, and there’s no boat I’ve ever seen that could cross it.” Following this, in one of the plays most touching lines, She/the mother/Kitty explains to Kieran: “We started down a wrong road; a long time ago, for all the right reasons, and, sure, we’re stuck on it now and we have to make the best of it.” Clearly, the audience has witnessed a kind of tragedy unfold.
The Iago-like villain of this tragic plot is the unseen but constantly discussed Babby, the sister of He who sets the whole painful process in motion. At first, her actions call to mind the well-meaning Aunt Lizzie from Brian Friel’s “Philadelphia Here I Come!” –the yank aunt trying to do right for her kin left behind in backward Ireland. But as the story progresses, Babby spins scheme after scheme, becoming ever more controlling, constantly whispering counterproductive advice into the ear of her brother, who, under her tutelage, becomes a dour disciplinarian obsessed with reputation and respectability, more sinning than sinned against for sure.
Last Thursday and Friday evening the Amateur Comedy Club, under the able direction and elegant set design of Stephen Butler (no relation to the author of this review!), presented a staged reading that brought this tragic play back to life on the New York stage for the first time in 30 years. Jeannie Dalton as “She” epitomized the full emotional range of a dutiful wife and loving mother struggling and suffering to hold a family together. And Kevin Gregory as “He” embodied the stiff, awkward carriage of a tall man whose stubborn pride and small, suspicious mind wreck the family’s chances of a happy reunion. This performance was all the more poignant given that Brendan Loonam was not there to witness it, having passed in 2019.
Though much less well-known and more compact in form than “Angela’s Ashes,” “Gone Away with a Sailor” is just as powerful a work of art. A dramatic rendering of one family’s resilience in the face of rupture, it offers important insights into the emotional toll of emigration, family separation and reunification. It can help us to think more about the complicated relationships at the root of our own Irish family trees. It could also help us to think more about the experiences of friends and neighbors whose families may have journeyed from other countries to America under similar patterns of chain migration.
For all these reasons, one can only hope that this two-night table reading is just the beginning of the play’s renaissance.
