Matt Shanahan Urges Support, Raises Concerns on Outdoor Dining
Matt Shanahan spoke in support of a bill extending outdoor dining and licensing measures and said he and members of the regional group of independents would back it. He called for clearer guidance and targeted supports for hospitality businesses facing winter trading and parking challenges.
Support for the bill
Matt Shanahan said the extension of the bill is right and recalled earlier calls for a cafe culture. He told the minister that his group will be supporting the legislation and that the measures helped hospitality businesses improve outdoor dining space.
Parking impact on rural towns
He warned that extending licensed outdoor areas has taken parking space in some rural towns and villages. He urged local authorities to engage with other shop owners who may be losing walk-in trade because parking outside their doors has been repurposed for hospitality.
Outdoor trading and winter viability
Shanahan noted many businesses did not plan to trade outdoors into winter - some can add heating or reduce drafts, others cannot. He suggested considering semi-permanent solutions on a case-by-case basis and asked that local authorities be advised on how to assess applications.
Financial supports and staff retention
He raised concerns about supports phasing out - including EWIS in April - and the impact on long-term staff. He relayed calls from operators to consider extensions or targeted supports for employees of two to ten years' service to preserve chefs, managers and other skilled staff.
Regulation, enforcement and antisocial behaviour
Shanahan asked for clarity on health and safety rules - hand hygiene, masks, spacing, air filtration and rapid testing - so hospitality can plan ahead. He also highlighted instances of antisocial behaviour where customers bought drinks and moved away from licensed areas and called for better coordination between Vintners, the Guards and the local authority.
We publish thousands of recordings to make Irish politics transparent and resistant to manipulation. Spotted an error? Report it — together we are building a reliable archive of Irish politics.
Minister, you are welcome back and congratulations on the new addition to your family. I and members of the regional group of independents will be supporting this bill. I think we can all probably remember not very many years ago Michael McDowell when he was in government suggesting that Ireland should have a cafe culture and society and I think little did we know how we were going to potentially arrive there but here we are. I think that the extension of this bill is right and that obviously it is going to help to licence laws to help the Garley and the local authority. I would point out to you Minister that there were some problems and you are probably aware when these laws were brought in particularly in some of our rural towns and villages where parking space was taken up to allow people to extend out their licensed area and I think a lot of rural towns and villages probably accepted that as being temporary. It now looks like we are going to be extending that and I think it would be important now that the local authorities would try and engage with maybe other shop owners. If you are a shop owner you are losing potentially parking outside your door, you may feel that the walk-in trade is primarily there for hospitality, not to come to your shop. This is an issue that needs to be looked at. I would also say to you that the Chris was very beneficial to a number of people in the hospitality trade when it was brought in to allow them to basically improve their outdoor dining environment. Having said that, they were not planning on bringing it on into the winter. Some of them had the potential to put in heating, some of them had the potential to reduce the amount of drafting and outside, how would I say, intemperate climate for want of a better word. The question is now whether we should be looking at extending possible supports to some of those people again, because going where COVID numbers are now, I think it is going to be far more difficult to get inside over the coming months. How are these businesses to survive? Are they to remain furloughed again? That does not seem entirely possible for a lot of them. I think the possibility is going to be there for some kind of semi-permanent solutions for some of these businesses. They will obviously have to be done on a case-by-case basis, but I would say to you that the local authorities are going to need to be advised in terms of what attitude they should take to those applications. There is another question as to how we treat those with no access to outdoor space. I have had a number of people in the pub trade who do not have an area whereby they can operate outdoors. Some of them may have a very small area where they have, let us say, a smoking area. They cannot convert that into a seated area for people to consume alcohol. That raises the question whether or not they should have some viability to look to seek to rent space extraneous to their own premises. Should they be licensed in that way? I think we will end up looking at that for some bars, or else we will have to support them to remain closed for the next time. That also raises another issue, which is in respect to the pub and the EWIS supports, which we know are phasing out in April. But the question was asked of me, Minister, by somebody who runs a number of establishments, where they have people who have been in their long-term employee five years and ten years. The point that they were making was there was no discrimination between the person who had been working for a month or two in terms of the pandemic unemployment payment versus somebody who was longer-term, or the same again for the EWIS. What they were hoping was for some extension to supports for people who were in the employer longer than maybe two or three years. These are skilled people. Some of them are chefs, some of them are bar managers, some of them are bar people. They are not easily replaced. Certainly, if you have a small business and you have a number of key people, if you cannot hang on to them when you open up again, you will see a pretty drastic impact on your business for quite a while, and I would ask you to look at this. The other issue, Minister, which you are well aware of, we need to get back to what regulations are going to cover again the idea of outdoor dining. If it is hand hygiene, if it is masks, all of that, if it is spacing, air filtration, rapid testing. I think we need to advise hospitality now over the next while, particularly in light of today's announcement. The only other thing I would say to you is, again, in terms of the Garthell presence, we did have some issues as well. You are aware of some antisocial behaviour when there were outdoor areas being licensed in that people were able to walk away, were able to buy, take it away, go further down the street and consume it there. I am sure the Vintners are very keen to see that that is not repeated and that everybody is supported. Again, I think we just need better coordination maybe between the Vintners and the Guards and the local authority. Thank you.
Thank you for downloading 🙏
If you publish this material on social media, we would be very grateful if you tagged VideoParliament. It helps us reach more people and keep building a transparent archive of Irish politics.
