{"id":378846,"date":"2026-04-02T21:21:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T21:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/378846\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T21:21:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T21:21:00","slug":"hospitality-vat-cut-not-needed-as-sector-has-bounced-back-very-strongly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/378846\/","title":{"rendered":"Hospitality VAT cut not needed as sector has &#8216;bounced back very strongly&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Government should scrap a looming VAT cut for the hospitality sector as the industry has \u201cbounced back very strongly\u201d from the pandemic, an economist has argued.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>As COVID sent the economy into a sudden recession back in 2020, the Government cut the VAT rate for the hospitality rate to 9%, returning it to 13.5% in 2023 once restrictions eased.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Last year, however, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newstalk.com\/news\/hospitality-industry-demands-9-vat-as-two-businesses-close-each-day-1759497\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">following sustained lobbying by the industry<\/a>, the Government announced the rate would return once again to 9% in the summer of 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>On <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newstalk.com\/shows\/the-claire-byrne-show-2228535\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Claire Byrne Show<\/a>, Assistant Professor of Economics at Trinity College Barra Roantree said the cut is completely unnecessary.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey should have never bought the arguments from the hospitality sector in the first place,\u201d he argued.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe&#8217;ve seen that the insolvencies are actually down on last year, but whenever insolvencies were mentioned, the hospitality lobby groups never mentioned and restaurants lobby groups never mentioned that there were actually 11 new companies being formed for every one that was closing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo, it was never the case that there was this tsunami of closures because there were much more restaurants opening than there were closing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Professor Roantree conceded the hospitality industry endured a difficult few years during the pandemic, but added they have \u201cbounced back very strongly\u201d since then.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey were not facing into lots of job losses,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut instead, their lobbyists managed to convince the Government that they needed a \u20ac700 million tax cut this year on top of the \u20ac2 billion in tax expenditures and reduced tax rates that they already received.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Because 13.5% is a lot less than 23% that&#8217;s paid on most goods and services.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1774051\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/2CWD5W8.jpg\" alt=\"Chez Max, French Restaurant in Palace Street, Dublin\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1694\"\/> A restaurant in Dublin,. Picture by: noel bennett \/ Alamy.<\/p>\n<p>Also on the programme, Sligo restaurateur Anthony Gray said the 9% VAT rate has \u201chelped us to hang on\u201d over the years and its return is \u201cvery welcome\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He added that many small independent traders are still struggling.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe fought hard to get the VAT rate to 9%,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are closures left, right and centre all over Ireland and especially in rural Ireland.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe hospitality industry and, indeed, Ireland rely on restaurants &#8211; we are one of the biggest indigenous employers in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Main image: A restaurant in Limerick. Picture by: Alamy.com.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Government should scrap a looming VAT cut for the hospitality sector as the industry has \u201cbounced back&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378847,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,113,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-378846","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}