Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I apologise as I have to go to another meeting. I am sorry I was not in for the beginning of Mr. Lynn's presentation. We are going from A to B to C today. It is just a very busy period. I assume he is involved in the hospitality business. I have not met him before. What Mr. Lynn is saying is very true. Look at what Fáilte Ireland said earlier this year. There were 40,000 vacancies in the tourism industry and 10,000 were for kitchen staff. I think that was in the spring of 2022, and they reported that 88% of employers in hospitality were having these difficulties. I know from my own county of Roscommon there are people, particularly in family hotels, pleading with me every second day of the week. They are having to close what are, in most cases, very good premises because they cannot get chefs in particular. In one case, the hotel was asked to dedicate a few rooms to the unfortunate Ukrainian people, they managed to get a wonderful young chef from Ukraine which was a very big plus. The language barrier was an issue, without doubt, but they managed and they worked their own-----