Tipperary hotels and restaurants are finding it hard to recruit staff

After finally reopening following the massive disruption caused by Covid-19, Tipperary hotels and restaurants are being forced to restrict their services because they can’t fill job vacancies.
One Clonmel hotelier has up to 25 job vacancies he is finding it very difficult to fill and partly blames the Government’s continuation of the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) for the shortage.
Meanwhile, a Clonmel bar and restaurant and Cashel hotel report they have been unable to fill vacancies for chefs and experienced restaurant floor staff.
County Tipperary Chamber CEO, Michelle Aylward, says Chamber members in the hospitality sector have highlighted difficulties they are facing in hiring staff and the chamber will be urging the Government to maintain the VAT rate for the hospitality sector at 9% next year to support them as they try to recover from the pandemic.
John Nallen, co-owner of Hotel Minella in Clonmel, said they normally hire about 40 staff for the summer season but since the hotel reopened in June they haven’t been able to fill a lot of these positions, many of which would normally be taken by Third Level students. They were only getting applications from 16 year-olds still in school.
They currently have 25-30 positions available and the gaps in their staffing means the hotel isn’t currently able to cater for the volume of customers they normally would have. “We are turning away customers because we can’t facilitate the people. Every hotel in the country is in the same boat. It’s soul destroying,” he declared.
He believes the fact many college students are currently in receipt of the (PUP) is part of the problem as they don’t have the incentive to get a summer job. He wants the Government to change the PUP scheme to stop this situation. If work is available for people, they shouldn’t be getting the PUP, he argues.
Mr Nallen also pointed out that for the past 10 to 15 years, the hotel industry has relied on foreign workers but the numbers of immigrants entering the country has fallen due to the pandemic and the application process for immigrant work permits is lengthy and difficult.
Meanwhile, Mulcahy’s Restaurant & Bar on Clonmel’s Gladstone Street and Bailey’s Hotel, Main Street, Cashel are also reporting difficulties in finding experienced staff.
Sinead Cash, front of house manager of Bailey’s Hotel, says they desperately need two more chefs and also experienced floor staff.
“We have started advertising but there is little or nothing happening.
“You can get kids who never had a job before but unfortunately it’s so busy that we don’t have time to train them in.
“We have a bar and restaurant and we have a lot of tables outside because you have to have outdoor dining. This means you have to have some staff inside and outside. We currently can’t serve food in our bar area like we always did, we physically don’t have the staff.”
Ms Cash says the chefs on their staff have been “amazing” working loads of hours overtime but they can’t sustain that.
She agrees changes need to be made to the Pandemic Unemployment Payment but any changes made now are not going to immediately help the hospitality sector. She notes that at least the PUP payment will be reduced from September though at that stage the holiday season will be over.
Overall, she believes hospitality businesses need more ongoing support from the Government to get back up and running again after the prolonged closure and disruption to the industry.
And she believes the shortage in chefs is more a long-term problem in the industry caused by a reduction in the number of people choosing it as a career.
“They have even stopped doing chef training courses in some of the colleges because there is so little uptake.”
Like Bailey’s Hotel, Mulcahy’s Restaurant is finding it difficult to find chefs and qualified and experienced hospitality workers like managers and supervisors.
Sharon Higgins, who runs Mulcahy’s with her brother Paul, says she hasn’t ever seen the worker shortage situation in hospitality so bad.
She reports that they have so far only been able to operate with restricted opening hours since reopening after the lifting of the Covid-19 restrictions on indoor dining and alcohol consumption last week.
“We don’t want to burn out the people who are working here. It’s very difficult. I don’t know if it’s going to settle in a few months .”
It’s a big change from a business that prior to the pandemic operated from 8am until late at night seven days a week.
She agrees the PUP is part of the problem but not so much for deterring experienced hospitality workers from returning to work in the sector as they would have been earning between €35,000 and €50,000.
Ms Higgins said the lockdown closures of hotels, restaurants and pubs has led to many people choosing to leave the hospitality industry as they wanted job security and couldn’t afford to live on the €350 weekly PUP payment.
“I know in our situation in every lockdown we lost senior experienced people and we lost the majority of them to different industries. When you have a family, €350 a week isn’t going to pay the mortgage.”
She acknowledges the unsocial working hours in restaurants, bars and hotels is also a factor but on the other hand there are many careers with unsocial hours.
Ms Higgins agrees with Sinead Cash that there is a long-term problem of not enough people being trained in hospitality jobs like cheffing in recent years.
“I do think going forward that there needs to be more training and encouragement of more people into the industry. There seems to be a severe lack of training.”
Michelle Aylward confirmed some hotels have reported to her that they are having to turn away customers during the current holiday season because they can’t “back fill” job positions lost due to the pandemic lockdowns.
She said the Chamber will be pressing the Government to maintain the 9% VAT rate for the vulnerable sectors of hospitality and retail next year to assist them to recover. She agreed the PUP was a factor in the shortage of workers and the Chamber wrote to the Government earlier this year highlighting issues with it. She noted the payment will be downgraded from September, a move delayed due to the latest wave of the pandemic. Ms Aylward said competition from other sectors, like retail, offering higher wages was also impacting on hospitality businesses’ ability to attract staff.