Mr. Paul Kelly:

As Mr. O'Shea outlined, significant progress is being made on how the industry is working to try to attract staff and address some of the insights regarding covering that research. We also have a programme to support the industry with recruitment campaigns and an excellent employment will launch later this year. They are all in train but, as Mr. O'Shea noted, it is very difficult.

The Deputy asked about Fáilte Ireland logos and so on. We make them available to all businesses in the sector to help them promote their business and that is the right thing to do. Particularly for accommodation businesses that are registered with us, they are properly registered accommodation businesses and, therefore, they should be afforded the right to use our logos.

I might return to an important issue raised by Deputy Griffin relating to the car rental sector. This is strategically an issue I am most worried about because people who rent cars in Ireland spend longer in Ireland and spend more money here. They visit places such as Wexford, Kerry and elsewhere throughout the country and they require rental cars to do that. The core economics of the rental car business in Ireland and the nature of the tourism business mean it needs to work economically for rental car companies to buy additional cars in March and then to sell them as second-hand cars later in the season. We submitted a report to the Department of Finance last year showing that some of the actions on how VAT and vehicle registration tax, VRT, are treated are making it exceptionally more expensive in Ireland to operate that model of being able to buy cars in March and sell them in October. The industry has certainly fed back to me that unless there is a change in the taxation model to facilitate that, when stock becomes available, it will continue to be uneconomical for car rental companies to increase their seasonal stock significantly, and that will damage tourism in Ireland on an ongoing basis. It is important, therefore, that we have the correct policy to suit the tourism need for rental cars because it is a supply issue and the more supply, the more competition and the more competition, the better the value.