I welcome the continued support for outdoor seating and dining, which has proven to be one of the most practical and successful measures for our hospitality sector in recent years. This is not just about tables and chairs on a footpath. It is about breathing life back into our towns and village across Ireland, particularly in rural and coastal communities. Outdoor dining has created a vibrant atmosphere that attracts visitors, supports local jobs and keeps small businesses viable. When the 9% VAT rate was introduced, there was a lot of negativity, shamefully, in this Chamber about big fast food companies gaining. Obviously, those speaking like that do not realise that small businesses relied on the reduction of the VAT rate. We in Independent Ireland fully supported it. When it comes to outdoor seating, it has given small, family-run business a fighting chance in the face of rising costs. Many of them invested in these spaces in good faith. They now form a core part of how these businesses operate. Take Schull, where I live, as an example. There is Townhouse O D’s, which has two beautiful outdoor areas, one on the back and one on the street. We have Jim’s café where people love to sit out and look at the ocean. Below that is the Harbour Hotel as well as Hackett’s Bar. It is great for the locality. It gives off a great vibe. Both tourists and locals love it. Sure, I would not mind being there today. I suppose anyone else would not mind being there today, especially in this weather. On the main street in Bantry, there are great cafés and restaurants with outdoor seating. There is also the Quay’s Bar and many others. The street is nearly full of umbrellas, tables and chairs. It is fantastic for the town. I could go on about all the beautiful places in west Cork, but what I am saying is that this is great for the whole country. We should be building on that success. I cannot understand why this is treated temporarily. This is a success story. No one in this Chamber objects to this measure. Good God, if we were in here objecting, it would never be brought up so often. I cannot understand why we keep having to come back in here to talk about it. Why can we not make it permanent and be done with it? This is a common-sense policy that works for businesses, visitors and local economies right across Ireland. We need to go further. We need to look at night-time buses in communities. There are pilot projects in Kerry and – I might be wrong – Sligo. They are great projects. Local Link buses are travelling around and dropping and picking people up during the night. For obvious reasons, people cannot socialise properly if they do not have transport. It is hard to get a taxi or a hackney. We should be looking at rolling out those schemes in a bigger way. I hear a lot of criticism in this Chamber about the 9% VAT rate and short-term lets. The Social Democrats and the Labour Party in particular have a real target of hitting tourism. For some reason, they are anti-tourism in this country, but they should not be. The 9% VAT rate was to help local communities survive the crisis they were going through, and the same with short-term lets. I was up in Galway for many weeks recently, where short-term lets are necessary for the very survival of local communities there, as in my constituency. They love people coming in mainly from our own country. They like to holiday around, find some place to stay, enjoy going out at night, have something to eat and spend money in the local economy. We have parties in here that are against that. I am scratching my head wondering what the hell they are at? They do not understand the benefit. Do not attack the tourism sector to try to fix the housing sector. Are we to ruin the tourism sector to fix the housing sector? That is where the Social Democrats and Labour have been for quite a long time. Other things like country markets and fair days benefit communities, bring people into communities and help people stay in them. We need to properly promote that. We need to look into areas we can force more business. Given the number of pubs and clubs that have been closed in recent times and clubs, that is important. I have been fighting a long time for people to come back to towns like Dunmanway to live in local communities. Its wastewater treatment plant needs to be upgraded. It is a sad thing to find out that after public representatives from the Government side stated it would get 50 houses with a recent do-up of the wastewater treatment plant, it would only get 15. Who is codding who while trying to get a big headline?

Sentiment score: 0.18