Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his feedback on the LPSS. I know that venues such as De Barra's Folk Club, Connolly's of Leap and many others did great work under the scheme. We hope to see a lot more of this with the recent scheme which closed for applications just last week.

I absolutely understand the sector's need for clarity and certainty. I have extensive and ongoing engagement with the sector. However, it is still about the public health advice, as I said earlier. It is still too early to say how and when other restrictions should be eased, given the current uncertainties. Based on my engagement with people from the sector, they find the speculation quite unhelpful so I do not want to engage in it. I prefer certainty too but at the minute, the restrictions and the public health advice do not allow me to give that certainty just yet. It comes down to the case numbers, the hospitalisations, the vaccinations and the variants. The Government is meeting in advance of 4 May to look at what May, June and July will look like and as I said earlier, I am cautiously optimistic, and when it is safe to do so we will look at that. There is also the tourism and hospitality forum. I addressed that issue regarding the oversight group, which is a more representative group and the bodies the Deputy is talking about are part of the tourism and hospitality forum the Tánaiste and I have established. We will meet again in May. At the last meeting, we brought the Taoiseach in to hear the concerns of all the members. The Restaurants Association of Ireland, the Irish Hotels Federation, the Vintners Federation of Ireland, the Licensed Vintners Association, Drinks Ireland, Fáilte Ireland and Tourism Ireland are just some of the stakeholders in the forum.

On the specific supports the Deputy mentioned, everything will be examined. A lot of those supports are in the recommendations of that tourism oversight group so I have brought that to the attention of my Cabinet colleagues and we will look at everything in the context of the national economic recovery plan.

On the stay-and-spend scheme, as I mentioned earlier, the stop-start nature of the pandemic has resulted in the scheme being completely underutilised. I am in favour of a scheme that would give a boost to the industry in the off-season. It was designed for the off-season and has attracted consumers. It was my colleague, the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, who did that. It was an innovative scheme but as I said, the stop and start nature of the pandemic led to it being underutilised. It is anticipated the Minister for Finance will take stock of the scheme as we reach the end of the month and look to see what appropriate measures could be put in place for the off-peak season.