Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

While I welcome any funds that have been given to the hospitality sector to date, the support does not go far enough. I say that as a self-employed person and in light of the fiasco during the week relating to inside dining in restaurants and pubs. As I stated yesterday, we are the only European country that does not have indoor dining. Even fully vaccinated people cannot dine inside in a pub or restaurant. Publicans and restaurateurs who have no outside areas have no alternative. They are in a predicament. Many of them do not own their pubs or restaurants. They may have mortgages, dependants or leases. They have been speaking to the banking sector and pushing back payments in the hope that they will be able to reopen. I spoke to business owners in the sector, some of whom have been in business for 40 years or 50 years and who had hoped the next generation would take over. They have spent their life savings trying to make payments while their business has been closed. The add-on costs such as insurance for the premises still have to be paid. Some of them have dependants.

I want the Government to go further in helping to support these people. Some of them need more funding because they have pushed all their resources into keeping the business afloat. After all the years spent creating a good business, they are now starting from scratch again. Some of these people are 60 years of age or 70 years of age and are trying to start their business again in the hope that the next generation will take over. I ask the Minister to ensure that the businesses that need more support will be looked after and brought with us.

Reference was made yesterday to the position of the younger generation.

They are in college and they had summer jobs and were also in receipt of a payment, which was welcomed. Many of those students will not now qualify for a SUSI grant for next year because they are slightly above the income threshold due to the payments they received during the periods when they were unemployed. I ask for that to be looked at. It should be waived for this year. Students who qualified to have their college fees paid for them last year should automatically qualify this year. What happened is not the fault of the younger generation. There was a pandemic. We must be conscious of that fact. People and families are now going to have to try and find the funds to pay the fees.

I wish to make a final brief point. The external hospitality sector is open for holidaymakers. We are all hoping to get a few days away somewhere. Following the ruling that was made during the week that the pubs will remain closed, we are hoping that all the young men and women who work in hospitality will look after us on holiday, whether it is at the pool or at outdoor sport and recreation facilities. On their nights off, however, they will not be allowed to eat or drink inside because they have not been vaccinated. This has not been thought through. The Government needs to consider those working in the hospitality sector.

The bus, taxi and limousine sectors have also been affected. The workers in these sectors must be considered. They have missed out in revenue. They have received subsidy payments during the pandemic. However, the problem is the requirement that vehicles must be replaced every nine years for drivers to get a taxi licence. Drivers have lost profits and have had to use their own savings to keep their businesses afloat, even though they were closed. Now that they are coming back to work, they face having to replace vehicles that are more than nine years old. Drivers will need three to four years to be able to recoup that to get them back to where they need to be.

Some business owners in the bus sector bought vehicles at the start of the pandemic. Some of these buses have been re-registered and parked up. While the banks granted borrowers repayment holidays, many of them have to deal with the issues they face during the loan term. When they open up their businesses again, their repayments are higher because they have to pay back the amount borrowed within the term of the loan.

We have a housing crisis, a materials crisis, a crisis at the ports and a felling licence crisis. All of these crises are causing problems for people who building or renovating homes and who are trying to make sure that they and their children will have a roof over their heads at an affordable price. I have worked in construction all my life and I have never seen the like of it. We are being told by our suppliers that they will only guarantee the price of the materials for one week. Many people want one-off houses built. I am now having to refuse to price such projects because of the fluctuation in the cost of materials coming in. When you build a house, you include a percentage margin in the contract. In determining the percentage margin, you factor in things going wrong and having to make minor amendments to the house. However, you do not factor in the cost of materials increasing week on week. In one case, in a job that we were doing, the price of steel went up by 19% over a period of three weeks. No business could sustain that. On the other side, the householders have their mortgage and have a set amount with which to build their house. Everything is pencilled in. However, such increases in the price of materials cannot be legislated for. If the issue with felling licences was resolved, there would not be so much pressure on the producers of the raw materials, such as timber. Those running businesses in the hospitality sector who need timber to create socially distanced eating and drinking areas cannot get the basic materials to do so. There is a knock-on effect. The price of insulation has also gone through the roof.

It is often said that we should go green and go electric. The ESB has announced that prices will rise by 9%. Here we go. We are pushing everything. There is a carbon tax. The people in the towns, villages and rural areas in Ireland are paying the most money because they have no infrastructure. They do not have access to bus and train services like those living in Dublin. People living in Dublin can leave their front door and find a shop within 100 yards of their home. They have access to taxis and the Luas. They have everything. However, for there is no infrastructure in towns, villages and rural areas. The people in those areas are paying the highest levels of carbon tax because they have no other choice. The Government tells us we should go electric. What happens then? The price of electricity goes up by 9%. This means that the cost of running electric vehicles will increase by 9%, as will the cost of using electricity at home. The cost of everything is increasing. The carbon tax and the cost of electricity are rising. Everything is on the rise. It is not sustainable.

Finally, I wish to make a point on the cost of rent in my area. For the past number of years, the cost of rent for a nice house in a rural area has fluctuated between €600 and €800 per month. A two-bedroom house in my area was recently leased at a cost of €1,200 per month. There are people whose children are moving home because they cannot afford to rent if they are in the family way. My son is a perfect example of this. He, his partner and my grandchild failed to find rental accommodation anywhere within a 20-mile radius of where I live. When they put their names down for a place on the market and looked at their income, they realised that they could not make ends meet. That is a problem going forward. The Government must think about it.

I know that the Government has taken some measures, but it must sit down with certain businesses. Accommodations need to be made for the next three or four years to allow people to rebuild.

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