I refer to the employment wage subsidy scheme, EWSS, and its predecessor, the wage subsidy scheme; and to the Covid restrictions support scheme, CRSS. The Minister of State talks about not having a cliff edge, but this is a cliff edge because the scheme comes to a sudden and abrupt end at the worst possible time for the hospitality sector, which is the month of January when things are at their hardest and business is at its lowest ebb. We have been clear all along regarding every scheme the Government has introduced and there will be no cliff edge in the EWSS.
The hospitality needs the 9% VAT rate for a two-year recovery period. In recent years the hospitality sector has had more time with a 9% VAT rate than at the normal 13.5% rate.
Key terms by TF-IDF across 3,573 words from 12 speakers. The summary quotes the highest-scoring sentences verbatim — nothing is paraphrased.
Tellers: Tá, Senators Robbie Gallagher and Seán Kyne; Níl, Senators Lynn Boylan and Paul Gavan.
Party shown is the one each member held on 2021-07-13, frozen by a dated join — not their party today. The Oireachtas API publishes no date of birth and returns an empty gender field for every member in this period, so no age or gender breakdown is shown.