Pat Casey (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish to raise the issue of the hospitality and tourism sector. I am disappointed to have to do so. The whole sector has been treated very badly this week. I have always called for any decisions made by governments to be based on the evidence. No evidence has been presented to our sector for the strategy the Government has taken. While I accept that public health has to be front and centre and the priority issue, there is now frustration about the Covid restrictions support scheme, CRSS. I was fully supportive of the CRSS when it was announced, but the more the details as to how it will be calculated and paid out evolve, the more frustrating it becomes. Now that the Government has decided to move to level 3-minus, or whatever it is, and hotel restaurants can open, hotels no longer qualify for the CRSS. This is having a horrendous effect on the industry and the people in it. We ask that we be allowed to open our doors to the whole country. We are prevented from doing that. It is allowed only from 18 December. We are asking people to come back to work for 20 days. We are trying to get staff to come off the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, and to come back and work in our industry for 20 days, only to be told their jobs could be gone on 6 January. This makes it impossible to operate a business. We must consider the people this is affecting, especially at this time of year. We are asking people to come back to work at Christmas and to abandon their families but also telling them that, by the way, we will let them go on 6 January. This House needs a full debate on the hospitality and tourism sector. It is disappointing that our sector has not operated as one, be it the wet pubs, the dry pubs, the restaurants or the hotels. As an industry, collectively, we need to come together and form a stronger union because we have been mistreated during the pandemic. We were promised the data. We have never been given the data or the evidence to back up the Government's decision. The CRSS is just the final straw. This survival payment that was promised to the industry is now being pulled by bureaucracy and detail.