Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 30 June 2020
Special Committee on Covid-19 Response
Impact of Covid-19: Hospitality Sector
Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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I will be sharing time with Deputy Ó Cuív. We will take five minutes each.
I thank the witnesses for attending. My first question is for the Restaurants Association of Ireland. Mr. Cummins's submission lists some of the challenges the sector faces on the road to recovery. A number of them were discussed earlier. I would like to ask him about the third challenge, namely, landlords seeking full rent for the period of closure. We have seen many relief measures such as rate breaks offered by local authorities, or certain reliefs offered by the banking sector to SMEs that are under pressure. Are landlords living up to their collective responsibility to be more amenable to tenants in the context of the pandemic? Admittedly this may depend on an individual landlord's financial circumstances. Could Mr. Cummins comment on that?