What additional employment and other supports will be put in place to assist hospitality businesses such as hotels, restaurants and pubs that have seen bookings for events wiped out over the last few weeks and in the run-up to Christmas? The worry is now keeping employed at a time when there had been a staffing crisis in the industry. The Irish Hotels Federation is reporting a loss in revenue of €90 million for hotels over the last couple of weeks and room occupancy rates of 35% for December dropping further to 14% in January and February.

From Clonakilty to Kinsale, back to Bantry and throughout the rest of the country, hotels face a very bleak six months until next summer. Many of them have been in contact with me continually. Does the Taoiseach intend to extend the current EWSS supports for hospitality at the current levels until April 2022? Does he agree that the waiver of local authority rates should be extended for hospitality businesses up until June 2022?

As I said in response to an earlier question from Deputy Doherty, the Government has not failed throughout the pandemic to intervene in an unprecedented way to support businesses, including hospitality businesses, throughout the country. The EWSS has been the most successful and effective scheme in underpinning companies. It is an economy-wide scheme. The Government is keeping it under review in light of current circumstances.

Deputy Kelly asked me about the Omicron variant in the context of education. I did not get the chance to say to the Dáil yesterday that one case has been confirmed and that the Chief Medical Officer has issued a statement in respect of that. One case has been confirmed from the S-gene deletion cases we spoke about yesterday. In that context, we will keep the economic support interventions under review. We understand fully the EWSS affects about a quarter of employers in hospitality.