Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. The tourism and hospitality sector is one of those that was most affected by the public health restrictions put in place throughout the Covid pandemic. Through no fault of their own hotels, bars and restaurants had to shut many times in order to help the country get through the worst of that public health crisis. On the other side of that, Government served up everything that was needed to keep the industry going, which was very important. The Government put in place unparalleled and unprecedented support for the economy with the wage subsidy scheme supporting the incomes of citizens across the country. I have been listening in from my office to the debate, which has been a great one. We need to nurture tourism carefully as 230,000 livelihoods are supported by it. Before the pandemic and before 2019 it generated over €7.5 billion in revenue for the economy, with over €2 billion in taxes generated annually for the Exchequer. There is no doubt but that hotels, bars and restaurants have not recovered to the extent that we would like.

Going forward with the crisis we have and with the crisis in England, we need to be careful about how we handle the VAT rate. I acknowledge that is costing a lot of money and, like Senator Carrigy, I would like to see it extended. The sector has two massive challenges. We have the warehousing of the debt, which is in excess of €400 million. That has been kicked down the road for another period but it still has to be paid. There is also the challenge of the energy crisis and again I acknowledge that the Government is bringing forward a considerable amount of money to help businesses with it. However, the cost is so horrendous and we have to all acknowledge that the hotel sector would use a lot of electricity. The costs are so horrendous and this sector will face continual challenges. I hope that some way will be found as we go forward to try to further extend that VAT rate. It is not easy but we do not want to destroy the sector either. I want to acknowledge again that there has been a lot of support from Government for the sector. The Government is well aware of the challenges the sector faces.