When it comes to messaging the secret for Government is to keep it simple. In Europe we may look on aghast as Donald Trump’s quick-fire dismantling of whole chunks of US Government apparatus but one thing he has done is keep his messaging simple. Big Government bad; smaller Government good.
Never mind the nuance that if you fire hundreds of nuclear safety engineers you may find yourself short-handed in a crisis, or if you dismantle swathes of the health research network the cure to the diseases today’s voters may require tomorrow will simply not be available.
Not that Cantillon is suggesting that the new Government here adopt Mr Trump’s approach but they could learn something from his messaging – not least when it comes to hospitality.
The last Government was embarrassed by some of the price gouging going on in the hotels sector at a time when hospitality was benefiting from a reduced VAT rate of 9 per cent to help it recover from the challenges presented by Covid. That special rate had been extended several times but eventually the Government restored VAT to its normal 13.5 per cent level in September 2023.
Inevitably, the industry returned to intense lobby mode again. The Restaurants Association of Ireland said 577 restaurants had closed in the 11 months after September 2023 but it failed to persuade Ministers Jack Chambers and Paschal Donohoe to relent in the last budget, with Donohoe arguing that cutting VAT for hospitality would reduce the scope for cuts in personal tax.
Yet just weeks later in its manifesto Fine Gael was promising an 11 per cent rate for the food and food service sectors, with other supports for the wider hospitality industry.
And last week, Donohoe, now back as Minister for Finance, said he would bring back the 9 per cent rate but only next January and only for the food and catering sectors, at a cost of €675 million.
Confused. You’d have every right to be. Bear in mind this is substantially the same Government that was in power for the past five years during which time the policy and the messaging has yo-yoed.
So if the plight of the hospitality sector is so urgent, as its representatives and Donohoe’s Fine Gael party (belatedly) argue, why are they being forced to wait another 11 months?
And if they can afford to soldier on through another entire tourism season can it really be so desperately needed at all?
