Ms Mary Rose Burke:

I will address some of the queries and then bring my colleagues in. When it comes to the buffering effect on the national development plan, we are very cognisant of the fact that in the recent crisis, 80% of the savings to the Exchequer came from stopping capital expenditure. That is not a costless decision. We are suffering the consequences of that now with a bottleneck arising from that lack of infrastructure spending. When we refer to the rainy day fund, we feel that there should be a commitment to capital expenditure that is funded, and that there should be provision in the rainy day fund so that those projects can go on if there is a challenge to the Exchequer. First, that would ensure that they actually get delivered. However, we also have to be able to signal to large operators that upskilling and scaling up in Ireland are worth their while because there will be a pipeline of infrastructure projects and it will not be stop-go based on which stage of the economic cycle we are in.

We echo concerns about the 9% value-added tax, VAT, rate for the hospitality industry. Obviously occupancy rates and prices in Dublin are fairly buoyant, but we are cognisant that it is not the same for the hospitality sector throughout the country. We feel that this needs to be there to make sure that we continue to get regional balance.

I will ask Mr. Sharpe to address the participation rate and how we see that.