🚨Minister for Finance: No Decision on #VAT9 Made Yet With just 13 days to go until #Budget2025, Minister for Finance @JackFChambers this morning confirmed on RTÉ Radio 1’s ‘Today with Claire Byrne’ that a decision is yet to be made on the hospitality sector’s single, unified ask: the reinstatement of the 9% VAT rate on food. Following Minister Chambers’ comments, in a message to members, President of the Restaurants Association of Ireland, Paul Lenehan, urged restaurants, cafés and all other food-serving hospitality businesses nationwide to make one last concerted effort as part of the #VAT9 campaign. “We are in the home straight of our campaign to save Ireland’s indigenous hospitality industry. No final decision has been made around the VAT rate, so please contact your local political representatives and share the seriousness of the challenges currently facing our industry. Your voice could make all the difference,” @PresidentRAI said. Separately, during this morning’s interview, Minister Chambers also addressed recent media reports suggesting a potential 11% VAT rate for restaurants, cafés and pubs is being considered. The Restaurants Association of Ireland fully agrees with the Minister that such a rate would not be appropriate as, from the RAI’s point of view, it would fail to stop the closures or restore viability to Ireland’s hospitality sector. The evidence is clear: 9% is the right VAT rate for our low-margin, labour-intensive industry, which has been disproportionately impacted by the sky-high cost of doing business in recent years.

🚨Update - 9% Vat Taoiseach @LeoVaradkar is absolutely correct that a splitting of the VAT rate for food and accommodation within the hospitality sector is possible. Restaurants already apply separate VAT rates to food and alcohol on a bill for a meal, for example, and six other EU nations have already achieved food and accommodation decouplings. It is pivotal now that the Taoiseach and Finance Minister @mmcgrathtd support the reinstatement of the 9% VAT rate for food-led businesses, as his Government colleagues Ministers @simoncoveney and @nealerichmond have in recent weeks. We can not allow a situation of small, independent restaurant and cafés being subject to the same VAT rate as large accommodation providers. The reinstatement of the 9% VAT rate is the only way a viable future for our industry can be secured. irishexaminer.com/news/polit…