Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his response. Some hotels will be left out of the scheme. Elaina Fitzgerald has been on the airwaves quite a lot lately. She is head of the Irish Hotels Federation. Her hotel in Adare, County Limerick, is one such hotel that will probably do pretty well coming into Christmas, but will not benefit from the scheme. That is her analysis, something that is replicated throughout counties in the mid-west. The cost of supporting 11,000 jobs in the hotel sector for the month of January is approximately €4.2 billion. Stability and certainty needs to be in place because if jobs are not supported many people could end up on the PUP.

In my limited speaking time, I wish to refer to the revaluation of guest houses. I understood it was going to stop, but it is still happening. I was told many months ago that it does not make sense for a hotel on the Muckross Road in Killarney to have to pay commercial rates while a 40-bed bed and breakfast does not. That might be fair and true, but valuation people are calling to the doors of bed and breakfasts in Clare to measure their square footage. On top of dismal trading this year and last, they are now being asked to pay commercial rates. Their families live at one end of their houses and they have one or two beds at the other in order to make an income. They should not pay commercial rates. I ask that the Government step in and call a halt to this.

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