An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business Seanad Éireann — 2023-02-23 ============================================================ Paddy Burke (FG), Agricultural Panel I condemn in the strongest possible way what happened in Northern Ireland last night. We have to condemn it at every available opportunity to us. I welcome the €1.2 billion cost-of-living package provided by the Government. I ask the Deputy Leader if we might organise a debate on the VAT rates in the House. I welcome the continuing 9% rate for the next number of months but inevitably, it is going to go back up to 13.5%. This will be a blow to small businesses when that occurs, particularly to small restaurants, bars and people providing food. We need a debate on that because when this happens, it will be a big blow for those small businesses. There may be other ways in which they can be helped. This issue warrants a debate before the summer and I hope the Deputy Leader will be able to arrange that at some stage. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2023-02-23/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:51:37+00:00 Sitting date: 2023-02-23