Retailers around the country are still struggling to attract staff three months after non-essential shops were allowed to reopen, according to the head of Retail Excellence, Duncan Graham.

Almost 300,000 workers in Ireland were employed in the sector before the onset of Covid-19.

In cases where staff were not originally from Ireland, many have decided to leave the country, according to Mr Graham, while other employees have moved into different employment.

“We’ve seen a movement of those people whose country of origin wasn’t necessarily Ireland, who during the period of the pandemic have moved back to Eastern Europe or wherever. I think we’ve seen a lot of that happening,” Mr Graham said.

In addition, because of the nature of the age profile in retail, some staff “have probably gone into further education”, Mr Graham said.

For shop owners getting staff “has been difficult”.

There are 25,000 people still claiming the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) whose original job roles were in wholesale or retail, according to Mr Graham.

“That is still a significant number of the 280,000 who have previously been employed in retail,” he said.

However, he added that the PUP “has certainly been beneficial for those people that were perhaps in retail positions [where] stores have closed for genuine reasons over the last few months, nobody decries them anything in that sense”.

The issue with staff shortages is “probably a bit more urban, a bit more in the larger locations, shopping centres and major city locations”, Mr Graham said.

His comments come three months after non-essential retail reopened on May 17. Since then, things have been “pretty buoyant, particularly in provincial locations, shopping centres”.

The spend has been driven by an increase in average transaction numbers.

“It is not being driven particularly by footfall being up. Dublin city centre, particularly, remains quite challenging – people aren’t working in offices, hospitality is only just starting to open up and there are no tourists around, all of those things have put a bit of a damper on city centre locations,” Mr Graham said.

With the sector back open, some landlords are starting to put pressure on retailers over rent. Commercial rent arrears remain “a big issue and some of this will ultimately end up in the courts”, Mr Graham said.

“But conversely there are deals being done, particularly with private landlords.

“The institutional landlords, the shopping centres, seem to be more difficult to come to the table than some of the private guys. That is not in all cases, that’s a very general statement to make, but that seems to be what’s coming up at the minute,” he added.

The most common agreements being reached between Retail Excellence members and landlords sees shops getting 50pc off the agreed rent for the periods they were forced to close.

“It is challenging, it is being worked through at this moment in time, but there could still very well be store closures to come before the year is out,” Mr Graham warned.