The impact of the foot-and-mouth crisis on an audiovisual firm, a printing company and firms of surveyors may not be immediately apparent. But so many events are cancelled and so much movement has been restricted that the effects of the disease are being felt well outside the agrifood sector.
Avcom is an audiovisual company in Sandyford, Co Dublin. Mr Tony Murphy, the managing director, explains: "We are down about £130,000 worth this month alone in audiovisual conference staging and business meetings because these things are being cancelled."
He employed 48 people until two weeks ago; it's now down to 42. "I need to keep those I have left because they are highly trained people who won't be easy to pick up if they go. They are young, in relationships and have mortgages. They would have to go to other industries.
"I'm just a small company out of a much bigger group that feeds from the incoming conferences and meetings. Lighting, set builders, event management companies, people who supply marquees, buses, even portable loos, are all suffering."
While he had every sympathy for farmers and concern over the impact of foot-and-mouth disease on the economy on the food side, "we may be doing untold damage to the economy on the tourism and conference side", he said.
Some 60 per cent of the work of Anglo Printers in Drogheda, Co Louth, is producing race cards, tickets, badges and other requirements for the horse racing industry - and racing has been suspended since February 27th.
"We have been losing orders to the tune of £10,000 a week," Mr Padraic Kierans, managing director, reports. "We employ 18 people. I would be looking at a big corporation tax bill which has to be paid within two weeks or I would have to make huge repayments to the Revenue Commissioners.
"We were making preparations for the Fairyhouse festival and the Punchestown festival, two of the biggest events of the year, which make up for some of the smaller ones. April would be a key month for our company. If we don't resume at Easter, we have a situation where we would have to look at downsizing our existing operation.
"We don't have any direct link with farming but we have been hit rather seriously. At what price do we save Irish farming? There is much more at stake here. People's jobs are on the line who have nothing to do with farming. I have a responsibility to my employees who see the presses aren't turning. We have to look out for our own."
Mr Colm Brennan is a management consultant who advises a geophysics and geo-engineering practice. "The National Development Plan is virtually stopped," he said, because "it's impossible and unacceptable for people to go on farmland or in any way to interfere with the countryside which might lead to the transmission of foot-and-mouth.
"In this particular industry, hundreds of people have been laid off," he said. They were an essential part of any civil engineering project.
Mr Pat Delaney, director of the Small Firms' Association, said the impact on businesses was being understated, and he has called on the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, to allow temporary relief of PRSI, VAT and PAYE for companies directly affected by the crisis. "Jobs in small businesses which are being lost have been too hard won to see them wiped out by a crisis which is not of their own making," he declared.
Mr Sean Hannick, chairman of ISME, has called on local authorities to defer payment of rates by small and medium sized enterprises which have been hard hit by the crisis. The Revenue Commissioners, he said, should show flexibility in their dealings with businesses experiencing severe cash flow difficulties and lending institutions should extend lines of credit and defer capital repayments on a case-by-case basis.