Mr. Eoghan O'Mara Walsh:

I do not believe Mr Kelly was saying that those additional few thousand bedrooms were going to come on stream straightaway. That will take time. The crisis brought about by the Ukraine conflict is going to be with us over the next 12 to 18 months. It is not a crisis of two or three months but one of two or three years. Unfortunately, the supply of additional bedrooms, which ultimately will moderate price, takes time.

My point on the VAT rate is valid. VAT is a value added tax. It is a sales tax added to the ultimate price of a bedroom or a meal. The vast majority of the 20,000 businesses in the sector are SMEs with modest profit margins. They have absorbed substantial cost increases and I do not believe they would have been able to absorb a VAT hike. An increase in the VAT rate would ultimately have ended up being inflationary. We strongly welcome the Government’s support for the sector in keeping VAT at 9%, at least until the end of the summer. Perhaps Ms Fitzgerald Kane wishes to contribute on that.