Paddy Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. I want to speak about the 9% VAT rate. The tourism and hospitality sector is labour-intensive. It is a seven-day-per-week industry that runs from 7 a.m. until 9 p.m. The proprietors of those premises and the people who run those businesses have several shifts a week to cover for, and it is not easy. In lots of sizable towns, you will see that other than in a filling station you will not get a sandwich after 4 p.m. because a lot of those small restaurants have one shift and they will close for one day in order that they are operating on five days per week. There are major problems for those small businesses.

As Senator Kyne says, if the Minister could decouple the food end of it from the accommodation sector, it would be a great help to those small businesses because they are suffering. I have been in the hospitality business for many years. There are long and unsociable shifts and hours on Saturdays and Sundays and to cover all of those shifts is difficult. That extra 4.5% makes an enormous difference. While it might seem small, at the end of the day, week, month and year it is a sizable amount of money extra that the business has to collect to cover the costs and pay for VAT, wages, PAYE and PRSI. In a lot of cases in small restaurants where they are doing breakfasts the breakfast can cost over €18, which is unsustainable. I ask the Minister to have a look at decoupling of some kind.