Mr. Padraig Cribben:

I thank the Deputy and I will try to address those matters. I am delighted to say his brothers in west Cork are members of our organisation. The Deputy asked if pubs qualify for any other aid but the only other one we can see is the holidaying of VAT from January to April, along with PAYE.

What actually happened in the early stages is that the Government did a very good job in looking after employees, and we commend that. What it did not do was to do anything for the employers who took the risk to create the jobs in the first place. That is why the July stimulus is very important. The only thing we can see is that they can apply for the restart grant, which is a minimum of €2,000 and a maximum of €10,000 based on last year's rates. That is really all that is available at the minute.

Whether we are powerless in terms of the insurers, I do not believe the issue of the full proof of a case happening on site. They resile from that on the basis of an intervention by the Department of Finance, but the insurers have very much said, "We are not covering, full stop. You can take us on. We'll see you in court. We'll see you in arbitration". We know that in one particular case there are half a dozen cases in the High Court and possibly heading beyond that.

We are a little perplexed also as to the reason food-only pubs were allowed open yesterday. We have been very consistent in our view that there should have been equality of opportunity for all outlets. All of them should have been allowed open on the one day, with specific guidelines and safeguards for public health. It baffles us how having a meal makes something safer than not having a meal. We would be ad idemwith the Deputy on that. We believe that would have been the right way to go.

In terms of Sky, the minimum the full Sky Sports package will cost, and if one is really into sport one has to put BT and racing on top of that, in the smallest band 1 pub is about €1,000 per month. Very simply, Sky do not negotiate. I had a meeting with its representatives once and their modus of negotiating was: "If your members do not think this is value for them, tell them to take it out. We have more subscribers in Birmingham than we have in Ireland". It was as simple as that. The cost is crazy, and it is up to individual members as to what they do now that sport is coming back in some shape or form.

We have spoken about the temporary wage subsidy scheme, TWSS. There will be extra staff required. That is the issue both Mr. Tim Fenn and I spoke about earlier in that there need to be significant variations on that.

The final issue the Deputy mentioned was the VAT rate. One of the points I made in my opening remarks is that there is now an opportunity, under new interpretations of EU VAT laws that have been put in place in Spain, Italy, Cyprus and other countries, that one can have a different rate of VAT for alcohol sold in the on-trade and the off-trade. I should add, and I have said this in various fora around here in the past, that when supermarkets sell alcohol below cost the State actually subsidises that through the VAT system because they can recover a higher level of VAT that they paid on the purchase than they actually pay when they sell. We now have an opportunity to put that right by charging a different level of VAT for alcohol for consumption in the on-trade. We are proposing that that would be put in place for five months to the end of 2020 to allow pubs, particularly the smaller pubs, to get back on their feet. We believe that would be a very welcome innovation in the July stimulus to help the smaller pubs get back up and running again.

While we welcome the new Minister for tourism, and it is not a reflection on the new Minister, we believe that Department should have formed part of one of the major economic Departments. We would have much preferred to have seen it as a Ministry on its own. We must bear in mind that this is our biggest indigenous industry.