Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)

What happens with these kinds of interventions is that sectors become dependent on them and do not innovate or reform. I am actually surprised that a party that describes itself as pro-business would propose an initiative like this. I was astounded to hear about it this last year from the Tánaiste and that he persisted with it. It needs interrogation. I will be very interested in seeing, when we finally obtain it, the advice departmental officials gave in advance of the decision. I can imagine what that advice involved. It was the same advice that was provided some years ago when the rate went back up to 13.5%. There were periods over the last decade and a half when, for all the reasons we outlined in respect of stimulating the economy, it was absolutely justifiable to reduce the rate.

During the pandemic as well, when jobs were at risk, there was absolutely a case to support these businesses. The record shows I lobbied the then Minister for Finance, Michael McGrath, when he was in that chair, to extend the debt warehousing period to give those businesses every chance to get back to viability and to prove their viability. That was always going to be the case when warehousing was ended. Revenue was very understanding. That was the policy. It understood the position businesses were in and understood when that ended and that tide went out, people were going to be exposed. However, to pick up on a point made and articulated very well by Deputy O'Callaghan, are we at the point now in our economy where we continue to bed this idea of corporate subsidies and corporate welfare into our system regardless of the evidence? We are in a dangerous place if that is the case because we do not have limitless resources. This was a choice that was made and it is a choice that this Government is going to have to stand over.

The Minister was being a little selective in quoting the numbers. What we did not hear about was the number of businesses that have opened over the past number of years. There is always churn in this sector. That is the nature of the sector. Historically, that has been the case. That is the case everywhere. There is churn in hospitality sectors and industries right across the globe.

I am not callous enough to say that every business in the sector is doing well. They are not. There are regional variations; there is no doubt about that. The importance of some businesses to particular communities varies as well, especially across the country. In rural areas and areas that very much depend on tourism, that is absolutely the case. The Minister put it on record himself. It is fiendishly difficult - in fact, impossible - to separate this out and target it at one business over another. All kinds of problems are generated in pursuing an objective like that. It is simply not possible. However, it is fundamentally dishonest for anybody, including lobbyists, to suggest this is the panacea for all the problems the hospitality sector is experiencing. It evidently is not. The longer we pretend that it is, the longer it will take to finally realise what needs to happen to sustain what is an industry that employs the second-highest number of people in terms of the indigenous SME economy.

A number of years ago, we identified the importance of the retail sector and I helped to establish the retail consultation forum identifying the fact that this was a really important sector in our indigenous economy. Why can we not do the same for hospitality? Is it the case that the Restaurants Association of Ireland and others are just happy that we fork out endless streams of cash rather than look at the structural issues facing us? That is the easy thing to do. The difficult thing to do is to professionalise the sector. Why do we not re-establish something like the Council for Education, Recruitment and Training, CERT, for example? CERT was a very successful national agency that helped to train people in the hospitality sector for good sustainable jobs in the sector that we should have. We do not have that. In a lot of cases, people cannot have a career in hospitality any longer because it is a sector that is addicted, as I said earlier on, to low pay and to precarity. Precarious work is a common feature in this sector. However, if we want to fundamentally address the problems of the sector, let us do that. Let us look at skills and support them in that way. Why do we not fundamentally review our local rates system? It is an absolute anachronism. It makes no sense at all in the modern economy to be operating the kind of system that we do.

Why can we not fundamentally address the fact we have the second- or third-highest energy costs in Europe? That is a critical issue in the hospitality sector. This is not the answer. It is a very expensive solution to, in some cases, a problem that does not exist. However, where the problems do exist, this is not the answer.