Mr. Ciar?n Nugent:

We are talking about working conditions. On average, weekly pay in this sector is about 30% less than the next-worst of the 14 or 15 sectors on which the CSO collects data on accommodation and food, etc.. You see it in the housing assistance payment, HAP, figures. The State already has to bail out this sector in a lot of ways. There are precarious working conditions, minimum wage workers, temporary workers, part-time workers, all that kind of stuff. When you look at the gross value added to the economy, it is down 2% or 3%. We should not be conferring unfair advantage on literally the worst sector in Ireland. Generally speaking, a developed country does not focus on tourism. Obviously, there are two kinds of economies in Ireland, the domestic and the multinational and everything like that. Going forward, a lot of the stuff in the Commission on Taxation and Welfare report is about focusing on high-end employment. Two hospitality workers cannot start a family or buy a house in this country. There is no chance. The average wage is around €350 a week. The pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, came in around that, as a minimum. Their average weekly wage does not even come close to the living wage if you calculate it on a weekly basis. It is probably hurting us economically.