Mr. Paul Gallagher:

I thank the Deputy. With regard to my reference to insolvency, no business people will speak about becoming insolvent in public because their bank of recourse would become particularly nervous about their prospects. There is no doubt that businesses in Ireland are burning a significant amount of cash just trying to stay afloat. Mr. Connick mentioned earlier that a closed attraction is still burning money and a hotel that is closed is burning money. I see insolvency becoming a big issue, which is why the State needs to introduce measures by way of a guarantee at low interest rates for businesses to access, which are properly termed so they do not cause any other issues and do not require other lenders to be subordinate to that line of credit. One of the issues at present is that schemes available to businesses require other lenders to become subordinate and that just does not work.

I am very concerned about liquidity. As an example, next month the forecast of occupancy of Irish hotels is 4%. This means there will be 57,600 empty bedrooms every night throughout the State. It is a perishable good. If it is not sold today we cannot sell the same night tomorrow. It is foregone revenue. Likewise, attractions and empty restaurants are also perishable. Business owners are at their wits' end as to how they will sustain their businesses.

Level 5 might be level 3 on 1 December. As Mr. Connick mentioned earlier, levels 3, 4 and 5 are pretty much identical for hospitality. There is no real difference, quite honestly. There are some differences but not a significant number of differences. If we find ourselves at level 3 in December, it is a key month for much of the catering and restaurant trade to do well quickly, just as retail looks at these three or four weeks. We then have to wonder what will be the survival rate of businesses in the small and medium enterprise sector throughout the tourism family. We see it with airlines. In what state will our airline industry be in five or six months' time?

With regard to rebalancing domestic and overseas visitors, overseas visitors are not all tourists. Some of them are business people travelling for business reasons, such as for corporate meetings. They are significant and important to the Irish market. Throughout the country the regions require overseas visitors just as much as they require domestic visitors.

Domestic visitors have been great this year and we are grateful for them but there is a significant number of new deposits in Irish households. There is pent-up demand to spend money. The Deputy is right that we will have to find activations to open these wallets and get these people back out to all parts of Ireland to spend money and put money back into the local economy. The appetite is there from domestic residents of Ireland. We see it now. People are really pushing to buy Irish, buy local and buy in their towns and local shops. If people do not do this there will not be a shop in their local town, which will mean they will not have a local town. It is a very holistic thing. It is a full circle for all of us. All of our growth is organic and where it is not overseas we rely on each other. All aspects of the local economy are hugely important to all of us.