The President of Carrick on Shannon Chamber of Commerce says he hopes lobby groups in the tourism sector will be able to persuade the government not to increase the VAT rate for the hospitality sector back to13.5% in September.
Colm Mc Garth was commenting in the aftermath of confirmation from the Finance Minister in recent days that it's intended to end the 9% reduction at the beginning of September.
The Carrick Chamber President says a recent report on behalf of the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation showed such a move will cost up 24,000 jobs across the country.
He says business in Carrick are lucky in the fact that local hotels decided to take a lower percentage of refugees than some other areas and that has meant there are tourists who are eating out and frequenting cafés and restaurants in the town.
Colm McGrath says thought that the energy costs and food inflation mean there businesses won't be able to sustain a return to a higher VAT rate at the end of a short tourist season…
'Sometimes when politicians make up their mind and they make it up on the back of figures from Revenue, they tend not to skew from that.
But like the Irish Tourism Industry, The Confederation and the Vintners Federation are very powerful lobby groups and you got to figure out they are on top of this, and hopefully they are.
They are throwing the figures right back at the government saying look, the impact of this is going to be drastic. That figure of 24,000 might be overstated but anything near that is a huge amount.'
