Budget marks 'last chance' to save Ireland's tourism industry, group warns

ITIC chief executive Eoghan O’Mara Walsh: 'Tourism and hospitality businesses have been disproportionately hit by the pandemic and shutdowns.'
 

This month’s budget marks “the last chance” to save the tourism and hospitality sectors, an industry group has warned.

The Irish Tourism Industry Confederation (ITIC) said the Government’s own warnings of 300,000 hospitality-related jobs being in danger due to the Covid crisis doesn’t have to become a reality. 

It said at least half of those jobs could be saved with the right levels of Government intervention.

ITIC said the loss of in-bound tourists, alone, is costing the industry around €27m per day and that up to €1.5bn is needed from government in the form of a rescue package.

“Tourism and hospitality businesses have been disproportionately hit by the pandemic and shutdowns, and Government must not let Ireland’s largest indigenous industry, and biggest regional employer, perish,” said ITIC chief executive Eoghan O’Mara Walsh, adding that occupancy rates in hotels are at just 9% next month.

ITIC wants the budget to include a reduction in Vat to 9%; a €500m package of business continuity grants; a waiving of commercial rates up to next April; and an improved wage subsidy scheme tailored specifically for its industry.

The group also wants the Government to announce a rapid Covid testing regime to allow for a safe return of international travel. 

It said the new ‘stay and spend’ scheme, aimed at encouraging people to spend and holiday in Ireland, is effectively already dead in the water due to the heightened Covid restrictions around the country. ITIC said the €275m being spent on the scheme should, instead, be converted into business survival grants.

Mr O’Mara Walsh said that it is “high time that the Government matches words with deeds” having said in its programme for government that tourism "will be placed at the centre of the National Economic Plan".