Mr. Paul Kelly:

I support everything that has been said. It is important for members to be aware this is not a tap that can just be turned back on. Ms Fitzgerald Kane referred to people challenges. Within the accommodation sector, in some instances, properties that have been sold from families that have run them for a long time. The properties have been bought by investors who are buying in to a model of humanitarian provision as opposed to a model of a hotel and they are setting up their business to run that way. In some cases, when these accommodations come back in, for them to come back in to tourism accommodation properly, there may need to be a change of ownership. In other cases, there will not need to be a change of ownership, but a complete rebuilding of a tourism and hospitality team within those properties, because serving visitors and tourists is quite different from serving long-term humanitarian accommodation. There will certainly be a need to rebuild the skills and teams. We know how challenging that has been post Covid.

Mr. O'Mara Walsh was making a point with regard to how those towns look for visitors if all the accommodation stock was gone and businesses were closed. Who wants to go to a town where the bars are shut, the restaurants are boarded up and the art gallery or visitor attraction is gone? It is very important to be aware of the complexity in getting this back in to tourism if too much degradation of the wider tourism ecosystem has been allowed to happen. Some very big challenges are to be faced and that is why the work the Government is doing is very important. To be as imaginative, create and aggressive as possible in finding alternative solutions for people, especially to plan for next summer, now, in order that as much of this accommodation as possible can come back in to tourism.

With regard to the Senator's point about contracts within percentages of hotels, I think I heard him ask whether should direction be given to IPAS to only take a certain percentage of stock from any one hotel. There are real challenges with that in the context of how to set such a percentage. Even if one says it is a maximum of 15% from any one county, one could still take all of Youghal and still take less than 15% of Cork, but it is devastating for Youghal. If one manages that per property, one has an incredibly complex situation to manage. There is a value in how one manages that mix and keeps a separation between long-term stays in properties and short-term transient visitors for the guest experience. It is quite a complex area to try to manage but the general approach of trying to find as many alternatives as possible ahead of the next summer season is key.