A Tipperary businessman says many hospitality traders are facing into a recruitment challenge later this year when they’re allowed to reopen.
Declan Collison, who runs Lough Derg House and The Lake Café in Dromineer says that the pandemic induced layoffs over the last year have forced many people to consider other sectors.
The hospitality industry isn’t expected to reopen until May at the earliest, when it’s hoped that the vaccine rollout will allow for a greater summer trade.
Declan says however that many workers in hospitality have moved on to the retail and pharmaceutical sectors.
“We’ve lost a lot of people to the retail sector because all of the supermarkets have been doing very well and they’ve all recruited people and a lot of them have come from the hospitality sector because the skills would overlap.”
“We’ve lost people to the pharmaceutical business as well and there’s a big fears that chef’s in particular are going to be very hard to get. They were scarce this time last year and they’ll be really, really scarce on the ground this year and it will cause a lot of problems.
