Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his reply. The restart grant is being paid very promptly, and that I welcome, but it was obviously devised with manufacturing type businesses in mind. Whatever happened, the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport did not make its case very well because rates are a major part of the overheads of any business in hospitality - hotels, restaurants and so on. The one thing we are absolutely certain about is that for as long as there is social distancing, these businesses, even though they will be open, will not be able to operate and will not be as profitable as they were previously. We have to reduce overheads. The restart grant, which is a rebate of the previous year's rates, is a very obvious first start but we need to lift the cap because it is out of sync with reality in the hospitality industry.

If we consider tour buses and so on, they will be limited in the number of passengers they carry. We need to look at the sectors that will have long-term restrictions on their ability to trade. Rather than forced unemployment, is it not much better to have people working and to make it economic to have extra staff, perhaps with a smaller turnover? That is where, again, we are a little late. There is no point crying over spilled milk but we need to have an immediate decision on the temporary wage subsidy scheme and it needs to continue for constrained businesses that cannot go back to business as usual. It needs to continue for as long as two constraints exist. One is the physical constraints because of health advice and the other is the business constraints because in terms of tourism, and this goes way beyond the tour providers, there are no foreign tourists here this year and we know people elsewhere are very reluctant to travel anywhere abroad. We find the same as regards people leaving the island. We need to deal with those issues.

I welcome the fact that people who booked holidays abroad had their deposits guaranteed. I find it hard to understand, and the Minister of State might address this, why tour operators who were taking the deposits of people coming into the country did not get the same guarantee on their deposits.

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