Mr. Adrian Cummins:

I will focus on recruitment and international recruitment. The Senator is correct. Both the RAI and the IHF are part of the Confederation of National Associations of Hotels, Restaurants, Cafés and Similar Establishments in the European Union and European Economic Area, HOTREC. The countries that we would recommend that the Government would start international trade missions to would be countries with high youth unemployment and Spain, Portugal, Greece and Croatia. We have already had some achievements with regard to attracting staff from Croatia, which has a smaller population density. I recommend that our first port of call is to go to the Mediterranean and promote Ireland as a destination for work. We should also benchmark what we did, as a country, in the past. During the crash the Canadians arrived here and offered all types of jobs in Canada. They came to the RDS and set up their promotions with the result that 20,000 Irish people went to Canada. We need a co-ordinated effort not just in hospitality but in other sectors as well because the construction sector and other sectors are crying out for staff. I think that we can work on this matter.

On the area of businesses that provide and do not provide good practice, we need to root out any business that does not treat its staff properly. There is the statutory agency called the WRC, as I said in my opening statement. We need more inspections. Wherever wrongdoing is found needs to be dealt with properly and accordingly thus ensuring that we have a proper sector in the future but I think that we need more WRC inspections.