Mr. Paul Clancy:

From a local perspective, we are looking at the live register and we are trying to encourage people. The Deputy might have seen the Fáilte Ireland presentation, which is currently on various media platforms, and that seeks to attract people into the industry and make it attractive for them to join. The presentation focuses on the flexible side of working in hospitality rather than on the negative side of, say, the late hours, and considering different age groups, and older age groups, that may be more interested in joining the hospitality sector.

From an international perspective, we work with EURES, the European Employment Services Network, as well as with COG and Fáilte Ireland with a view to arranging conferences in, possibly, Spain, Italy and Greece that have a high youth unemployment rate and encourage people to come to Ireland. As an organisation, we are actively working on that with COG and Fáilte Ireland to encourage those initiatives. We also work with our stakeholders in the industry such as the Restaurants Association of Ireland to get these initiatives going and create an awareness that there are opportunities here. I hope that we will get some traction on all that. We are looking both locally and internationally, while trying to make the whole industry attractive. The spin that Fáilte Ireland is doing will have a good impact on raising awareness that the hospitality sector can be a great place to work from a life perspective, and if we can do that then, hopefully, we will attract more people to work in the industry but it is a challenge at the moment for sure.