Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 30 June 2020

Special Committee on Covid-19 Response

Impact of Covid-19: Hospitality Sector

Mr. Padraig Cribben:

That is a good question and there is a bit of considering how long is a piece of string in trying to reply. It depends, to a certain extent, on the development of a vaccine, safe travel and things like that. I can say with a high level of certainty that while 2020 is absolutely written off, 2021 is close enough to also being written off because much of the inward-bound tourism for 2021 would have been planned in 2020. On getting back to 2019 levels, that was a record year by any measure and I suspect that getting back to such levels will take at least until 2023, possibly 2024. It will be a gradual development to that point. Before March, we had thousands of viable businesses in this country and, with the flick of a switch, they became unviable.

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