Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 23 March 2021

Joint Committee on Media, Tourism, Arts, Culture, Sport and the Gaeltacht

Impact of Covid-19 on the Hospitality Sector: Discussion

Photo of Niamh SmythNiamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We are tight for time, but I would appreciate it if the members would indulge me and let me say a few words. I will then invite our guests to wrap up, if that is okay.

Like my colleagues, I am very passionate about this industry. I am from a county and constituency in which pubs and restaurants are the lifeblood and heart and soul of what remains of the main streets in our towns and villages. That is particularly so in rural parts of the constituency. I commend the businesses that are able to operate at present in some form. They are the businesses that can provide food. I have seen it in Bailieborough where Bailie Hotel has rallied to find a new way of doing things by being able to provide a takeaway service for food. Everybody is sick of cooking at this stage. However, I feel sorry for the businesses beside them that are closed because they do not provide food or because the business is a non-food pub. That has been massively divisive and has done a great disservice to towns and villages throughout the country.

I have a question for Mr. McGann.

I have had the lovely experience of being in his lovely village pub in Monivea, County Galway. Like a lot of villages across the country they do far more than just provide a service. They provide a social amenity where people can meet up, an amenity that has been absolutely wiped out. Many businesses are run on pride, having been passed on from generation to generation, without ever having been sustainable even before the pandemic happened. Those people and families had felt a real commitment to their communities to stay open and to provide that social amenity for people to meet up. The villages' banks are gone, the post offices are gone or the local shop is gone.

On the businesses that have been run as a civic duty to communities and which may not have been sustainable in the first place, have we an idea about how the long period of being closed may have provided an opportunity for people to get out of those businesses? Have we an idea as to the number of pubs that will not reopen?

I thank our guests for being here. The committee heard some staggering figures, some compelling statistics and some harrowing stories. I give the witnesses our assurances that as a committee, we will certainly work on all of the issues raised. I am very interested in speaking further with Mr. Cummins about the training apprenticeships. This is something that we must raise with the Minister, Deputy Harris, to make it more attractive to business people. It certainly would not make any sense that they would pay college fees, which is exactly what is happening and it is cost-prohibitive.

Perhaps Mr. McGann will respond to my questions and then we will bring in any of the other guests who want to contribute and to wrap up.

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