Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I want to acknowledge what the Deputy has said. I outlined the provisions that were made at national level across the sector. Each one of them worked its way down to individual people who are involved in the industry. I mentioned the global name for each of the schemes, but every one of them had a positive impact on many people on the ground. It takes time for those schemes to work their way down through the system, but this has been done.

Everybody now recognises that many people are back at work. Some 90% of people who were on the PUP earlier in the year are now back at work. In the days, weeks and months ahead, the focus has to be on the specific sectors that are now affected more than others as a result of Covid-19. Everything we talk about now has to be geared towards specific sectors. Large sections of the economy are back to normal again. I met many business owners in the last couple of weeks who said that despite everything, they have had a reasonably good year. However, that certainly does not include this sector. That is why it has to be has supported specifically.

The Deputy mentioned issues such as the key employee support scheme. Such issues, along with training for the industry, need to be examined to make sure core people are in place such that when tourism fully reopens next year when Covid-19 is behind us, we are not short of staff and we are not looking outside the country for people to come in and give people their céad míle fáilte.

The tourism VAT rate does not hold for the full year. However, it is designed to get us over the tourism season, which was the main element. I am sure that topic will come up for discussion in the period ahead again. I thank the Deputy for raising that. The people had commenced the cancellations before the Government made the announcement. Many people would have been hesitant about going out, regardless of whether the Government closed down or introduced the midnight restriction. I will talk directly to the Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin, in the morning in light of our debate this evening.

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