Mr. Mike Buckley:

No, I think Mr. Barton has answered the Deputy's question. The seasonality of the coach tourism business is very important in the overall scheme of things. When the pandemic hit in March 2020, everybody had had a good, decent season in 2019. To put figures on it, 11 million visitors came to Ireland in 2019 and 2 million of those were transported by coach tours around the country. It would be remiss of me not to say that we get into every region in the country. Coach tours take people to Gweedore in Donegal, the Dingle Peninsula here in Kerry and the wilds of Mayo and Wexford, so it is important to highlight the add-on that coach tourism gives to local economies, in particular in the more peripheral areas of the country, in shops, cafés, small hotels and the attractions that are set up along the Wild Atlantic Way and on the south-eastern coastline. These areas are hugely dependent on coach tourism going there. What happened in March 2020 was that people had a decent season, their funds were exhausted and they were looking forward to a decent year in 2020 and, all of a sudden, no revenue was forthcoming. That was the reason the panic buttons were pressed in March 2020 and why we commissioned Jim Power to do an economic report, which gives a very stark picture of where we are at.

I concur with what Mr. Barton says about next year. There is still a huge amount of uncertainty about 2022. Please God, when we do come back in March and April we will see coach tours operating around the country again. However, we will have huge difficulties with staff shortages. We also need support to get us to March 2022 because we do not have a season this year that would allow us to put a pot of money away to meet payments and continue existing in the sector.