The outdoor dining enhancement scheme provides funding for improvements to outdoor dining facilities for gastro pubs or pubs providing food. Will the Tánaiste consider extending this scheme to wet pubs as well? I refer to pubs exclusively selling just drink to ensure they can open and have outside facilities. Many owners of such facilities have been in contact with me seeking to have this grant available to them so they could provide facilities outdoors during the summer months. Hopefully, if things open up and if the vaccination programme continues to roll out at pace, they can open as well. I would like to ensure the outdoor dining enhancement scheme open to bars and pubs that serve food is also available to bars and pubs that only sell drink.

As the Deputy knows, all the evidence suggests that outdoor dining is much safer than indoor. The same applies to drinking outdoors being safer than drinking indoors. That is why the Government established a scheme to help restaurants and gastro pubs make better use of their outdoor areas. I understand that so-called "wet pubs", and I hope we abolish that term soon, cannot avail of this scheme. Deputy Michael Moynihan has raised this today and Deputy Phelan also raised it earlier this week.

I will endeavour to see if it can be changed. I will have to talk to the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Deputy Catherine Martin, to see if that can be changed. There may be good reasons for excluding those pubs that I am not aware of. On the face of it, however, it certainly seems like common sense that this scheme should also be open to pubs that do not serve food. I reiterate that I will take this up with the Minister and I will respond to the Deputy as soon as I can.