Mr. Mike Buckley:

I will come in here. I thank the Deputy for the question. Regarding the €10 million, and to provide some historical perspective, we commissioned Mr. Jim Power, one of the leading economists in the country, to draw up a report for us after March 2020. The impact of the pandemic hit us like a tornado and we needed to quickly see where our losses were accruing. That economic report examined our fixed costs. Our difficulty was that no revenue was coming into any of the operators dealing with international tourism or private coach hire because all events were cancelled. We were facing a situation where no revenue was coming in, while we were still operating and had to insure our vehicles even as they depreciated greatly in value.

Mr. Power collected and collated a great deal of information from the sector and arrived at an estimate for our fixed costs of 17%. Although no revenue was coming in, our costs were still running at 17%. The final figure was arrived at by taking the overall figure for the revenue garnered by private coach tours and private hire operations in 2019, some €250 million, and then taking 17% of that amount as representing fixed costs. The total came to €42.5 million. We assumed at the time, in our innocence, that the pandemic was going to last six to nine months. Until March 2021, therefore, we predicted that we would have losses of approximately €32 million. That is the amount that we requested in funding from the Government then.

We were allocated €10 million in the July stimulus of 2020 and we were very grateful for that funding. To put the situation into perspective, however, that amount would cover the repayment capacity for two or three months of a touring coach. These coaches in our depots and yards will not have moved for some 24 months by the time there is any smell of a recovery in the market. In summary then, we were very grateful for the €10 million in funding. It was a lifeline to support operators and get them into 2021. The difficulty that arose in the context of the new variants appearing and ongoing lockdowns is that the 2021 season has, effectively, seen business dissipate as well.

There was an opportunity towards the end of the year to generate international business, however, due to travel advisories in the US advising against coming to Ireland, a signal was sent out that the country was closed. The amount of international business in September-October is minimal and only scratches the surface. We were grateful for the €10 million funding, but the original request was based on our fixed costs, which were €42.5 million per annum.