The stimulus package is expected to be announced this week. We know the Taoiseach is tired having come back from Brussels. We need to look at the bigger picture in terms of stimulus measures. Every bed and breakfast, farm and country guest house, small hotel, big hotel and Airbnb that gets a booking through Booking.com, or any of the other numerous booking agencies, most of which are based outside of this country, pays a charge of between 10% and 20% in respect of each booking. This money is not paid to the hotels, bed and breakfasts and so on. Rather, it is going out of the country. The Government needs to look at this area. In some cases, the charge is equivalent to the VAT rate, which is 13.5%. We need to stop this charge by asking people to holiday at home and to book directly with the bed and breakfast, guest house and so on. There are many of them in my own parish, community and county and throughout the country. We need to cut out the middlemen and the racket of booking online and the charges because we are losing too much money to our economy.

That point is very well made in terms of stimulating the domestic tourism industry and encouraging it through various mechanisms that are under consideration by the Cabinet sub-committee and the Cabinet. We need to develop incentives and mechanisms to encourage people to spend on bed and breakfasts and to take a weekend away in Ireland over the next number of months because, as we know, tourists are not travelling to Ireland in anywhere near the numbers of a year ago. Of all the sectors of the economy, the travel, tourism and hospitality sector has been most severely hit. We do have to take measures to encourage people to spend and to holiday locally. For example, there is a huge build-up of savings and if we can trigger some of that into the economy, it might help to keep people going over what will be a very difficult period to Christmas.