Mr. Donall O'Keeffe:

The skills required to manage customer service, manage staff, manage suppliers, schedule events and to staff up or staff down are gained mostly through experience rather than from formal learning, but we found with the diploma that it gives people a structure to think about how it should work in the licensed trade. The other thing we learned, which is massively encouraging, is that many of the students who went through our diploma are now in senior management roles in large pubs or pub groups or are out working for themselves, where they have taken leases on pubs and are trying to build their own business. What we find with students who have high levels of energy and enthusiasm is that their ultimate goal is to establish their own business and work for themselves.

One of the really important things about training provision, and the reason we believe there has to be a dedicated hospitality body for it, is that it has to be designed for the specific environment of the licensed trade. It is not a nine-to-five job. It is late at night and over the weekends, dealing with large numbers of customers and staff and all that goes with that. However, one of the things we are encouraged by post the pandemic is that, like with the VFI apprenticeship course, the demand for our course is overwhelming. Our September course is virtually sold out without advertising it at all. The business now realises that we must invest in our staff given the brain drain we endured through Covid-19. There will be huge opportunities in large commercial pubs throughout the country over the next five to seven years for ambitious staff. Part of the challenge for us and the Government is to highlight that.