Mr. Donall O'Keeffe:

We believe hospitality and tourism fit together. It makes sense to us that the Department and Fáilte Ireland would be natural homes for hospitality. Currently, Fáilte Ireland has a clear remit regarding tourism, but not hospitality. As it stands, hospitality probably sits in the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, but under its SME business and perhaps even microbusiness for many of them because of the small number of staff. Given the scale of the industry nationally, given that it employed 250,000 people pre-Covid-19, and we hope to rebuild to that, and given that it is in every parish, town, city and county in the country, there appears to be an overwhelming case for a single Government entity to take responsibility for hospitality. As we have had such a traumatic pandemic, the challenge of rebuilding the attractiveness of the sector is going to be a multi-year and, ideally, State-led initiative.