Mr. John A. Moran:

There are a couple of points I wish to clarify at the beginning. The Deputy says I represent SMEs but it is important to remind people that I really see myself as an independent chairman. I am not part of any representative group; I am adding some experience and expertise to help to tease out the policy issues at play. I believe representatives of the Irish Hotels Federation are to appear before the committee this afternoon. I suspect they are the right people to ask the question. Yesterday I was talking to a hotel owner who predicts 25% occupancy in the hotel for the summer season. The hotel does not even break even at 35% or 40%. That is not to say the hotel will just increase its prices. To go back to first principles, it is really important that the Government act quickly and get ahead of the problem. If every one of the affected businesses, including hotels, understands what its cash flow is and that it is supported by Government measures to trade through one of the most difficult years of trading we will probably see in this country - a year even more difficult than any in the last crisis - it will indicate what the businesses need to have built into their processes. Whether a particular hotel is affected or not, it will allow all of the business to price properly in determining how to get out of this crisis.

I repeat what the Deputy said: we need to move quickly and at scale, and we need to find a way to give businesses certainty about what the next year and the year after will look like in terms of the supports they have from the Government.