I want to acknowledge the range of supports put in place by Government to support businesses, particularly those in the hospitality sector, during the Covid-19 pandemic. Without these supports many businesses would have closed permanently but thankfully many were able to survive at reduced capacity for the last two years. While I appreciate that we are not out of the woods yet, hopefully in the next year or two things will be able to return to normal with the easing of restrictions. Many of these businesses are now facing a new and significant challenge to their future, namely, staff shortages. According to research carried out by Fáilte Ireland, as many as nine out of ten hospitality businesses are having difficulty recruiting staff with up to 40,000 vacancies. These vacancies are across all departments, including chefs, kitchen staff, front-of-house staff, waiters, waitresses, housekeeping staff and receptionists.

Many restaurants are only operating for four or five days per week. One local catering company in Galway has 15 vacancies, with no applications or interest being expressed in the available positions. Before the pandemic, the tourism and hospitality sector was worth almost €10 billion to the Irish economy, with hotels, bars and restaurants employing up to 300,000 people, with 100,000 extra in the summer months. There is significant pent-up demand from international tourism and also domestic tourism, with traditional annual events and festivals expected to proceed this year.

Tourism should be expected to return to record numbers, but unfortunately staff shortages are threatening this recovery. The work permit scheme is strict about qualifying job categories and rates of pay. The work permit system should be looked at to enable the hospitality sector to secure essential workers and to help our economy to recover as quickly as possible. Difficulties organising visas, long processing times and many vacancies in job categories that do not meet the criteria need to be reviewed to help our economy in the short to medium term. Another significant issue is accommodation, with many hotels setting aside a certain number of rooms for workers. This takes capacity out of the tourism sector.

Will the Taoiseach look at the criteria for the work permit system and expand them to facilitate the hospitality sector?

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue and acknowledging the strong support the Government has given to the hospitality sector because, without question, it was a major victim as a sector as a result of Covid-19. It had a horrendous time during the two years of Covid-19. The Government allocated a record level of funding for tourism in budget 2022, of €288 million in total, which was an increase of about €67 million. That covered marketing strategies, with €80 million for the Tourism Ireland programme to strengthen its international campaigns.

We are responding to labour shortages through a combination of the employment permits regime and through upskilling, especially with training in the further education sector. The Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science is working closely with the Department of Social Protection on the Pathways to Work plan to do everything possible.

A number of occupations in the hospitality sector have been removed from the ineligible occupations list and are eligible for the general employment permit. Access to employment permits was widened for all grades of chef in 2019, including experienced executive chefs, head chefs, sous chefs, commis chefs and so on. They can all now apply for a general employment permit to work in a restaurant at a remuneration level of at least €30,000.

In 2021, 400 employment permits for chefs were expedited to support the sector as the economy reopened. In October 2021, the Minister of State, Deputy English, established a quota for 350 general employment permits for managerial roles in the hospitality sector, including catering, bar, hotel and accommodation managers. The demand for those permits is low. I accept that it is higher for chefs. Approximately 1,096 employment permits have been issued to chefs since January 2021. Some 1,079 were general employment permits, six were critical employment permits and 11 were reactivation permits. There are currently about 827 chef applications in the queue, awaiting processing, with 749 in the standard queue and 78 in the trusted partner queue. We will do everything we can to accelerate the work permit process to meet a genuine shortage in the hospitality sector. There is no doubt about that.

I thank the Taoiseach for his reply. As he knows, Galway is a culture capital, known for its many festivals and cultural events, including the Galway Arts Festival, the Galway Races and the Film Fleadh. No matter what weekend people come to Galway, they will find a festival somewhere. The lack of staff will have a negative impact on tourism and the success of many of these festivals. Businesses are now trying to plan for the summer season, but they are limited by the difficulty of securing staff. I am aware of a restaurateur who went to Portugal and secured six staff on the condition that they be provided with accommodation, which that person was in a position to do.

I ask that the Taoiseach bring together the representatives of the State agencies, the restaurant associations, the Irish Hotels Federation and the vintners to look at this serious situation and to try to find solutions so that our economy can recover as quickly as possible. I acknowledge what the Taoiseach said about work permits, but hotels and restaurants cannot get many front-line staff, such as ordinary kitchen staff, waiters, waitresses and reception staff either. They cannot even get them within the EU, never mind outside it, because of the difficulties with work permits.

I will talk to the Minister again about that. I would just say that Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment advised that it only received 12 applications for hospitality manager positions under the newly introduced quota, which I referenced earlier. That might indicate that demand for those type of positions is low.

Processing times are not what they should be, but the Department has an action plan to reduce turnaround times. That plan is yielding results. The processing team has trebled in size and daily output has more than tripled from 2021 levels. That figure relates to the processing of the work permit applications. Internal processes have been streamlined, so progress is being made. For example, in medicine, hundreds of doctors have been removed from the system thanks to changes put in place following engagement with the Department of Justice and the Department of Health.

Waiting time for critical skills employment permits has been more than halved in the past seven weeks. The Department plans to maintain processing times for all critical skill applications at approximately six weeks for all of quarter 2, on the assumption that demand remains at current levels.

I will go back to the Department in respect of chefs, in particular. There are many people who could do with a weekend in Galway, given how the Deputy has described it.

You would want to be able to feed them in Galway.

You would find some way of doing it.