Tax Reliefs
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-25
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Ged Nash (LAB), Louth

Of course it will, and who would not want free money? However, that does not address the structural problems we have in the hospitality sector. We had a VAT rate cut of one form or another in place for the vast majority of the past 15 or 16 years. In fact, the Labour Party helped to introduce that back in 2011 to ensure we could generate some jobs in a sector that could quickly add them, and it absolutely did, as the evidence suggests. However, notwithstanding that there are subsets of the hospitality sector that are in difficulty, there is always churn in the sector more broadly. That is not me being callous about it; that is the reality of business. We cannot continue to permanently support the bottom line of every business. This is a place where we need to have hard conversations with businesses and workers about the finite resources we have. Is this the best way to use the resources we have?
We will have little change out of €2.5 billion between now and 2030 from this VAT cut. My only concern is whether this is the best use of public resources, given this is a sector that all the evidence suggests is, thankfully, adding jobs, not losing them.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-25/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:51+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-25