Mr. Adrian Cummins:

When we applied for funding from the labour market activation fund, we had to find employers that were willing to take on staff. We were told to put in a project with about 200 training places. We had between 150 and 160 businesses that had guaranteed to take on one or two people and give them jobs. When one replicates the estimate for an industry that has nearly 4,000 restaurant businesses - that does not include hotels or pubs that do food – there are vacancies. We are inundated at the moment with requests for chefs. There are 300 jobs today on irishjobs.ie and other job websites. We are looking for skilled staff. There is a need out there but we need to get the bodies in place. One cannot just take a person off the live register and put them into a kitchen. One must train them. It takes four years to train a fully qualified chef. One has to start somewhere.