Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I cannot confirm that at this point because the decisions to be made on what will and will not be in the July stimulus will not be made until a Cabinet meeting on Monday or Tuesday. We will make any announcements next week. A reduction in the VAT rate is of little use to pubs that cannot open. The best thing we can do for the sector is to get the pubs open. When a business is closed it does not pay any VAT. The best thing we can do to help pubs and other businesses that have not reopened to reopen over the coming weeks is to go back to doing what we have done really well as a country for a couple of months now, that is, social distancing, handwashing, sneezing and coughing into a tissue, keeping a reasonable distance from other people and wearing masks on public transport and in crowded indoor spaces. If we get back to that, I think the number of new cases will level off. It will stay at perhaps 20 per day, and that will allow us to proceed to phase 4. That is what we need to aim to do.

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