Ms Elaina Fitzgerald Kane:

Absolutely. The Chair referred to her community and the Bailieborough Hotel. We are lucky enough to have three hotels. We are intertwined with other events, such as GAA meetings. The Chair spoke about funerals and communions. We are woven into the fabric of our community. When the pandemic came, even before announcements were made about everywhere closing, many of our local retail shops closed. Some are more specific to tourism but some were general clothes shops and so on. There was not sufficient throughput. I see people coming in laden with bags, spending in the local economy, and supporting those local jobs. I would have serious concerns. None of the hotels in the context of where we are is contracted because many are in the events business. Events inevitably happen all year round, at weekends, and so on. For communities where all the accommodation is potentially taken up, that has a significant impact on the business community and the tourism community, and as the Chair said, on the fabric of the community. It is monumental. It took a pandemic to realise how hotels and tourism are part of the infrastructure of so many regional communities. This is a different crisis.

We need to expedite the current whole-of-Government approach because it will only get worse. More people may come into the country, and then we will have the tourism influx. How will it all balance? We talk about occupancies of 90%, but there will be false versions of any information. Right now, 24% of accommodation is being used to provide homes for refugees, but the reality is that if one adds that to 71% to 73% levels of occupancy, which we saw in 2019, that is nearly 100%. That will lead to distorted market conditions. This will lead to the demise of the tourism product because, with nobody to go to attractions, they will not be sustainable. All these issues are real and profound. It will potentially be a bigger problem regionally than in Dublin.