Mr. Adrian Cummins:

I thank the Chairman and members of the committee for the opportunity to appear before it. On behalf of the Restaurants Association of Ireland, I extend our sympathies to all those who have lost family and loved ones during the Covid-19 crisis. I thank our front-line workers for their Trojan efforts to keep our country safe, and especially our medical staff throughout the State. Members of my family are involved on the front line, and I appreciate the work they have taken on board. We thank them thoroughly.

Restaurants, cafés and gastropubs are a key component of the accommodation and food services sector. At the end of 2019, 125,800 workers were employed in food and beverage activities according to the Central Statistics Office, CSO. There are more than 10,000 such businesses, with 6,500 having a broad regional and rural footprint. It is estimated that the restaurant sector contributes €3 billion to the economy annually. It is a key customer of Irish agrifood producers from a farm-to-fork perspective.

The sector is also a crucial component of the Irish tourism product. Having a high-quality and affordable restaurant offering is vital to the success of tourism in Ireland. Restaurants and food service businesses employ workers in almost every city, town and village in the country. The programme for Government is clear: tourism is one of Ireland’s most important economic sectors and the Government recognises its significance as a source of local employment and regional development. Serious damage will be done to this sector if those businesses are not enabled to survive.

The past 17 weeks have had a significantly damaging impact on the restaurant and hospitality sector. The recent CSO survey on the business impact of Covid-19 stated: "More than three in every five (62.2%) of enterprises in Accommodation and Food Services had ceased trading, either temporarily or permanently, compared to 7.3% of all other Services enterprises." Simply put, the restaurant and hospitality sector was hit hardest by this crisis and will take the longest to recover. It cannot be denied that there will be no mile-long queue to enter restaurants, as is the case for some high-street retailers. No booking websites will crash with appointment inquiries, as is the case for some in the beauty industry. The recovery for restaurants will be slow and, without tourists for the foreseeable future, it will be a hard-fought battle to survive. Without immediate access to, and an extension of, the temporary wage subsidy scheme, seasonal businesses, the mainstay of Irish tourism, will not reopen. Current business supports do not go far enough.

The CSO reported last week that just 3.5% of SMEs have applied for the Covid-19 working capital loan scheme. SMEs simply cannot afford more loans. We have put forward a viable, fully costed plan to stabilise and rebuild the Irish restaurant sector, and its author, the economist Jim Power, is here today. As we start on the road to recovery, the challenges we have are that seasonal new businesses are excluded from the temporary wage subsidy scheme, which we require to be extended to next year to give us some fighting chance of keeping our doors open; that there has been little or no payout from insurance companies on business interruption claims; that landlords have not stepped up to the plate and are demanding full rent for the period of closure at a time of economic crisis in our country; that utility providers have disconnected services; and that the VAT rate of 13.5% is unviable and must be reduced to 5%.

Some say the market will take care of itself and that unviable businesses will fail.

How does one tell a third-generation family business in the hospitality sector in Waterford, Kilkenny, Monaghan, Dublin, Cork or any other part of Ireland that, through no fault of its own, it must fail because the country and its Government did not see the value in protecting small businesses and jobs? The cost of not supporting the restaurant sector will have a much greater impact on the economy because 100,000 workers will remain unemployed and the costs to the Exchequer will be €2 billion on social protection expenditure, €500 million in lost payroll taxes, €240 million in lost VAT receipts and €52 million in lost commercial rates. We are asking the committee for urgent action and a roadmap. We are also seeking assistance to help our industry recover.