Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for attending. This is obviously an incredibly important issue. Our own report quoted a figure suggesting that 67% of employment in the regional parts of Ireland is linked to tourism. I am based in west Cork so I can see how important it is.

We will go straight into the questions. The first is for the Irish Hotels Federation and the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation. It is on pricing. The committee has had a fairly robust discussion about pricing over the summer, especially with regard to Dublin. I would be slow to get into that debate again but will say that I totally appreciate that, compared with the average increase in Europe and the figures that were quoted, 80% compares well. However, the main point related to the extortionate prices being charged in connection with certain events that were on in Dublin at that time. That is what really stuck in people's throats. It may have been a small minority. From what we could see, it was certainly not in those family-run traditional hotels that this was happening. For the most part, it was in hotels owned by international consortiums and so on. That is what grabbed the headlines and tarnished the industry more than anything else. I will not go down that route again.

With regard to what we can do for hotels and all businesses associated with or involved in tourism, there are a lot of challenges facing tourism. The cost of energy is an obvious one but there is also the auto-enrolment pension payment that businesses are to face, the increase in the minimum wage and the VAT increases proposed for the new year. Of course, insurance is also still a very significant problem. Do the Irish Hotels Federation and the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation feel that the TBESS goes far enough? If not, what other supports should Government be looking at besides the obvious measures of keeping the VAT rate at 9% to assist the industry through this period?