Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will be around. The Minister of State need not worry; I am always around. A gang of his crowd arrived one night in January in a kind of clandestine raid to Hanora's Cottage in the Nire Valley. I happened to turn up and knocked on the door, and the poor woman, Mrs. Mary Wall, nearly collapsed. When I arrived, there were five or six of us, and they enjoyed it and I enjoyed it. We were well looked after, with a nice drop of the craythur, a roaring turf fire, wonderful food and splendid mountains to climb.

As has been shown again with this pandemic, everything is booked online. It is online, online, online. It is all card payment, no cash. Every time we make a booking, whether on booking.comor numerous other booking agencies, between 10% and 20% of the cost of the sale is taken by the companies. Whether it is a bed for a night, a meal, a trip on a bus, a boat tour on a lake or whatever, between 10% and 20% is being creamed off by those companies. One must deal with simple matters such as that. We should try to curtail it. Such companies have to live too but they should be given 5% instead, for example. A charge of 10% or 15% cancels out a 12.5% VAT waiver. The money is flowing out of the country and we cannot seem to see it. We need to get down and dirty and get in business people such as Michael O'Leary or the many other self-made people who have started companies. I am sure they will be attacked for having low-paid workers. I am an employer myself. Almost all small employers look after their staff well and vice versa. It is a two-way street.

The scheme is doomed to failure. It is too slow and has been nobbled by the banks. They will have control of it and we know they will do what they have always done. I am asking the Minister of State, even though it is probably falling on deaf ears. He is wearing a face mask tonight but the Government has a mask around its ears. It does not seem to understand what makes ordinary people tick, what makes a man get up in the morning, be self-employed and borrow. The Government is trying to roll the credit unions out of business altogether. The Minister of State is a Meath man and he should know it. He should talk to the small employers there about what they want. It is not loans at these interest rates. They should be paying no interest. They need stimulus and grants, but above all, they need to be allowed to live. The Government should cut out the cabal of the insurance companies, the banks and the utility companies, robbing businesses in daylight every day.

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