Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The stimulus package is expected to be announced this week. We know the Taoiseach is tired having come back from Brussels. We need to look at the bigger picture in terms of stimulus measures. Every bed and breakfast, farm and country guest house, small hotel, big hotel and Airbnb that gets a booking through Booking.com, or any of the other numerous booking agencies, most of which are based outside of this country, pays a charge of between 10% and 20% in respect of each booking. This money is not paid to the hotels, bed and breakfasts and so on. Rather, it is going out of the country. The Government needs to look at this area. In some cases, the charge is equivalent to the VAT rate, which is 13.5%. We need to stop this charge by asking people to holiday at home and to book directly with the bed and breakfast, guest house and so on. There are many of them in my own parish, community and county and throughout the country. We need to cut out the middlemen and the racket of booking online and the charges because we are losing too much money to our economy.

See this speech in context