Mr. Paddy Lynn:

The Senator raises a fascinating suggestion. The Ukrainians were given PPS numbers. More power to them. It is great to have them here. It is superb. It is possible to make things happen quickly. We can do it. It is, 100%, an issue all over. On 25 May, the LVA told a joint committee that one third of hospitality staff are gone. That is vast. It quoted a figure of 260,000.

I spoke with a hotelier on Newstalk two days ago. She was unaware that chefs were not on a critical-skills list. The owner of Matt the Thresher, where I worked for ten years, was also unaware. It has only become an issue since Covid and this mass exodus of people. We have not needed critical skills at this level before but we do now. The only way to solve it quickly is by their addition on this list. The only real barrier is the third level thing. We analysed the chefs on our database currently and 60% have third level education. There is great quality in the ranks of our chefs. They are not Irish and I wish they were. They are people from overseas, outside the EU. They have great English as a second language. Everyone can interview strongly. Most have super hotel backgrounds and college experience plus work experience. They are raring to come here. They want to come here but the only barrier is the timeframe. The hotels cannot wait four or six months for staff to come in. They cannot predict that far ahead, as much as they would want to. They are running a day-to-day business. The chefs have to make decisions about what they will do. Khairul who is with me today has six children and a wife. He is from Kuala Lumpur. He has travelled the world as a chef for many years. He is interested in exploring the world. His wife and children do not intend to come here. His wife is an accountant who works at state level and the six children are various ages. The goal is not to move everyone here. I am not saying that is the case for all of our chefs but they want to bring their skills here for a period at least. All we need to do is to make that more easy to achieve.