Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

As I said yesterday, I welcome the fact that the acting Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Ronan Glynn, has given clarity that Covid is going to be with us at least for the next six to nine months and we need to plan for it. The economic forecast yesterday presented a very bleak picture as regards unemployment for the next 12 months, particularly in regard to unemployment in the domestic economy and for young people. It is very worrying. The unemployment rate for the year is expected to be approximately 16%, which is worse than during the financial crisis a decade ago, falling to 10.7% in 2021. It is going to hit local economies especially hard because they are depending on the domestic economy, whereas the multinationals are not particularly dependent on it and they are the ones that have kept the country going to some extent as regards unemployment.

I want to ask the Taoiseach about the hospitality, tourism, entertainment and food industries. I want to know specifically what the Government is going to do for the people working in those industries because they are bearing the brunt of the crisis more than anyone else. I say this with some knowledge as I used to work in Fáilte Ireland, which I have referenced a number of times before. The issue for me is that it looks like we are going to have continual local lockdowns of counties depending on the way things develop. That is something we can assume will happen. It will have a huge impact on these sectors because from day to day, week to week and month to month, people working in hospitality, including in pubs and restaurants, people driving tour buses, accommodation providers and those working all across the tourism sector, will not know if they are going to have an income. They will not know what their income is going to be and they will have very little notice of any lockdowns. By the way, that is not necessarily anybody's fault. I am saying this to be constructive and not to make a political point. It is not necessarily anybody's fault. We see that there are 100,000 people claiming the PUP in Dublin, which is an increase in the numbers, and most of them are in the hospitality, tourism, accommodation and food sectors.

I want to know what is going to be done for those people. We cannot continue to have a situation where they are put into lockdowns and are unable to provide a service. They do not know if their county or area will be next and they do not have a stable income. Will the Taoiseach consider a full restoration of the pandemic unemployment payment on a sectoral basis for these sectors and industries, namely, hospitality, tourism, accommodation, food and drink? We need to plan for something like that. For more than a year, the Labour Party has called for an Irish Kurzarbeitmodelled on Germany's short-term work scheme for these sectors so that there can at least be retraining going on while there is a PUP-type payment. Will the Taoiseach consider a sectoral payment for all of these areas over the next six months? If all of these people are worried about their county going into lockdown, we must have a mechanism to keep them going, keep income coming in and ensure there is continuity in regard to employment in the sector.

See this speech in context