Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail)
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I agree that Mr. Lynn should be invited in because we all accept there is a massive crisis. In my own county and region it is very difficult to recruit and retain staff. As the Chairman will know, in many respects it is an employees' arena in terms of jobs. One of the reasons it is difficult to recruit and retain staff is because some hospitality work involves working unsocial hours. People can choose not to be away from their families at night and work straight days or whatever. We need to do everything that we can to help the sector because hotels and restaurants are struggling.

There is one chink of light. I know of a wonderful family-run hotel in my area. They work so hard and they have found it very difficult to recruit all staff ranging from floor staff, waiters and waitresses and they have found it extremely difficult to recruit chefs. The owners of the hotel were asked to take some Ukrainians and give a few rooms over to them. Thankfully, one of the Ukrainians is a chef. She is a wonderful young lady and she now works in the hotel. There is a slight language barrier but they are getting over that. That is a little chink of light but the industry is in crisis with trying to recruit and retain of staff and I am very concerned. Owners of two businesses wrote to me to inform me they now close their premises every Monday and Tuesday because they cannot get the staff and they cannot expect their current staff to work seven days a week. That is going to happen throughout the country.