Mr. Tim Fenn:

There have been challenges all along and the Senator identified some new ones. As for whether people are optimistic, pessimistic or whatever, if Covid had not happened and we were nonetheless facing what we are facing now, people would be in shock. Given we have come out of the shock of Covid, this is just another diversion. People are in a mindset of resilience and recognise they will have to work harder to get through this. We are saying there will be ways in which we can take on more people, such as some of the people who did not work last summer, students and so on. Perhaps it will include transition year students, fifth year students and that kind of thing. There will be sources for people, but we cannot replace all the skills shortages from the Irish market, which is why the permit system is critical and has to be fixed. In that regard, we cannot wait six, eight or ten weeks to find out it will take a further six, eight or 20 weeks to get people. They will not be coming in until October at best, and that is just not going to work.