Mr. Seán Connick:

I thank the Deputy for his questions. From early April, Fáilte Ireland has engaged with the sector and set up online training, online portals, support through HR and various other support mechanisms that it has worked with, along with introducing some funding streams. Paul Kelly and his team have been very active in trying to support the sector. Obviously, there are huge constraints on what can be achieved because of the scale of what has happened to the sector but, overall, we have benefited from mentoring and financial support and continue to benefit from stakeholder engagement with Fáilte Ireland fortnightly, which is really important. We hope Fáilte Ireland, under the new funding schemes it got from the budget, will be further able to assist the attraction sector over the year ahead.

As for the banks, Mr. Gallagher alluded to the fact that there is a difficulty for us all in that we are closed. The visitor attraction sector and experiences sector close at level 3, so whether it is level 3, 4 or 5, there is little or no difference as far as the impact on us is concerned because we shut down at level 3. We are all incurring costs just to be closed. The amount varies but is anything from €10,000 up to €20,000 per month, depending on the overheads such as insurance, light, heat and other general overheads and costs we have just keeping the business ticking over in the absence of any income. I have referred to this as post-Covid debt. This debt is building up. It has been building up across 2020. It will continue to build up across 2021. To be fair, while the banks have been supportive to date, now that we are looking at a scenario in which we will probably be moved to specialist units, I am sure the sector will need the support of the Government, possibly through Fáilte Ireland, to come up with funding schemes or a scenario in which we have the opportunity to avail of loans at very low interest rates - if it is debt we have to take on - or grant schemes for some of the iconic attractions and some of the State's very valuable assets that we happen to manage and run. The current operation of the SBCI loan scheme and microfinance is really not suited to our sector in that the terms are too short, the rates are too high and, again, there is a reluctance on our attractions to take on this added burden of debt when the season ahead for 2021 is so unpredictable.