Cork hospitality group will fight for 9% Vat rate

Hopes of the hospitality Vat rate going back down to 9% in the next budget appear to have been dashed by the Minister for Public Expenditure, but a Cork group lobbying for the reduction have said “we’re not going to give up”.

Speaking to media on Thursday, Pascal Donohoe said that the hospitality sector makes a huge contribution to the economy and is “a really important part of cities and communities across the country.”

However, he said, “a decision with regard to the 9% Vat rate would have a cost well in excess of €700m."

"When it was last brought down, it was brought down at a time our hospitality sector was either closed or was barely able to function because of the imp of public health regulation”. 

Impact

While he said: “I recognise how demanding it is to run a small business in the hospitality sector,” he explained that “such a change would have a very, very large impact on the budget and would absorb a large amount of the money that would be available to use”.

Jamie Budd, of Budd’s restaurant in Ballydehob, who spearheaded the VAT9 campaign earlier this year, said: “To be honest, I’m not surprised. It was never looking like they were going to go back on their decision.

“Those figures the minister has given are absolutely rubbish, we broke it all down and they’ve not taken into account all the closures or anything, it’s plucked out of thin air because it favours their decision making.

“We’re going to keep campaigning in order to try and swing that decision more in our favour, as a group we have lots of meetings planned with politicians, because if they’re not going to lower it back down we need to be focused on getting more help for this industry," he said.

“We’re going to need proper help, grants and subsidies if we don’t want to see lots more boarded up premises in every town and village in Ireland.”

Politicians themselves “want to see independent business thriving,” Mr Budd said, but “the world we live in is geared towards corporations and multinationals, which is really sad, soon even in rural places it’s just going to be loads of chains because they’ll be the only people that can afford to operate”.

There was a “quadruple whammy” of costs last year from the Vat rate increase to minimum wage increase to huge hikes in the price of energy and produce," he said.