The owner of a chain of Supervalu supermarkets says the reliance of businesses on students and less experienced staff needs to be examined.
Liam Ryan was speaking as 102 of his employees from his four stores are out of work due to Covid 19 or isolation rules.
This has led him to examine measures such as shorter opening hours in an effort to take the pressure off the business.
Many of his employees are students and he says while they have been taking on extra hours to help ease the staffing crisis this is not sustainable as they will be returning to college shortly.
Speaking to RedFM News Liam Ryan says long term he needs to look at new ways of changing the make up of their workforce.
"We do realise that on a long term basis we have an additional problem.
"We're not unlike any other business in town, where every business in town is looking for additional staff - we're no different.
"We're going to have to look at new ways of employing more experienced people where possible and maybe change the makeup of our workforce, but that's certainly more important in the next 3-6 months."
