Mr. Liam Berney:

My point is that we need to take a holistic approach to this issue. There is a range of solutions, including reforms to the health service such as those I have talked about, to give nurses more responsibility and do some of the things to which the Deputy referred. It is also necessary to look at how we train nurses and to consider whether we are training enough nurses and doctors to respond to the needs of the health service. The public service pay agreement has charged the Public Service Pay Commission with looking at the retention and recruitment issue in the health service in order to identify the bottlenecks and consider how the problems can be resolved. That work is going to be done as a priority and we should have a report on it before the end of the year. That will address some of the issues raised by the Deputy. The unions will make submission in the normal way to the commission. I look forward to that report.

On the question of the VAT rate, the simple point we are trying to make is that we currently provide a very generous VAT rate to the hospitality sector. We have a crisis in other parts of our economy, where that money could be better spent. We strongly believe that the money provided through that subsidy could be better spent elsewhere. We do not necessarily see the risk. If we increased the VAT rate tomorrow, I do not see evidence that hotels and hospitality venues would close down across the west of Ireland. While there has been a drop in visitor numbers from the UK, the numbers from the United States have increased in the same period with one group replacing the other. That is according to statistics from the tourism industry. It was on "Morning Ireland" just the other morning. In the crisis that we are currently facing across a lot of our public services, there are better uses for the money that is being provided to the hospitality sector through the subsidy of the lower VAT rate.