The formation of a new, independent body with responsibility for oversight of the hospitality sector is among the key recommendations contained in a new report into working conditions and skills shortages in the area by the Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport and Media.
Members of the committee also called for measures aimed at improving pay and conditions in the sector, changes to the regulations governing the granting of visas to migrants coming to Ireland to work in hospitality and a range of initiatives intended to provide greater training and career development opportunities to either intending to work, or already employed, in the industry.
At Tuesday’s launch of the report, Sinn Féin TD Imelda Munster said the was an onus on the Government to take the recommendations onboard and “not to pay the usual lip service to workers’ rights”.
Several members of the committee, which was chaired by Niamh Smyth of Fianna Fáil, stressed that the report was not intended to be taken as a blanket criticism of employers in a sector found to have provided 11 per cent of the country’s jobs before Covid and, it said, around two thirds of employment in rural and regional areas.
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It did, however, cite evidence provided to it of employees reporting “a lack of appropriate pay and a lack of break times” as well as “instances of bullying, harassment and other harmful workplace behaviours”.
There was evidence, it was suggested, that women and migrant workers tended to encounter particular difficulties.
Ms Smyth said that the committee felt a sector that “is central to the vitality of the Irish economy” would benefit from the establishment of an independent body to oversee it. Currently, she said, “no one body has responsibility for the hospitality sector” and in addition to a new body that would be to hospitality what Fáilte Ireland is to tourism, there needs to be “greater collaboration by existing agencies in relation to it”.
Representatives of trade unions present at the launch welcomed a number of the recommendations contained in the report including its call on the Minister for Tourism, Catherine Martin, to “engage with industry stakeholders… to seek as a matter of urgency, a workable solution to the legal issues that have shut down the Joint Labour Committees relating to tourism and hospitality and to ensure that they can be reestablished to provide a process for fixing statutory minimum rates of pay and conditions of employment for employees in these sectors, given the clear evidence presented to the Committee of widespread poor pay and conditions”.
Industry representatives were less enthusiastic about some of the content and tone, with several arguing that the vast majority of employers in the industry value their workers and treat them well.
Eoghan O’Meara Walsh, chief executive of the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation, said that there while he felt there were many positive aspects to the report, there were others he was “uncomfortable with” and there was a need for a “balanced discussion”.
“There are 20,000 tourism and hospitality businesses in the country. The vast majority are SMEs, a lot of them are family owned and the vast, vast majority, I would argue, are excellent employees. There’s about 250,000 people who work in the sector. It’s the biggest indigenous industry, the largest regional employer by far [and] some of the characterisations I’ve heard from the floor, I don’t recognise.”
Like O’Meara Walsh, Adrian Cummins of the Restaurants Association of Ireland said his organisation would take some time to digest the contents of the report before formally responding.
“If there are bad employers out there, and I think it is a small minority, they need to be rooted out but I think the law needs to be the same for all sectors. We shouldn’t have different laws applying to people working in restaurants, hotels or bars to those that apply to those working in shops or any other business,” he said.
