Restaurants want cut in minimum wage
15 November 2009 By Susan Mitchell

The Restaurants Association of Ireland (RAI) has called for an 18 per cent cut in the minimum wage paid to the 64,000 restaurant staff in the country.

It also wants Sunday premium pay to be abolished and the end of the joint labour committees that set restaurants’ minimum wage. In its pre-budget submission, the RAI said the minimum hourly rate of €9.32 that restaurants had to pay was inflated.

It believes that hourly pay rates in the sector should be on a par with the national minimum wage, which the RAI believes should be cut from €8.65 an hour to €7.65 an hour to take account of the economic downturn.

‘‘In 2005, the minimum wage was €7.65. Our GDP this year is going to fall to the level it was at in 2005," said Adrian Cummins, chief executive of the RAI.

He said that the RAI’s ‘survival plan’, which will be launched tomorrow, would seek a ‘‘composite system for determining the rate of Vat applicable on a meal’’. It wants a rate of 13.5 per cent Vat applied to food, in cases where the food element of a meal accounted for more than two-thirds of the value of a meal.

The pre-budget submission also calls for tax relief for investment in the sector. Cummins said that businesses could claim capital allowances against the cost of fitting out industrial premises at a rate of 15 per cent per year." We want a level playing field," he said.

The RAI will also call on the government to tackle local authority charges and prioritise food tourism. Among the measures it will propose are a reduction in airport taxes and free public transport for tourists who are over 65.’‘We want to bring the grey pound into the country," Cummins said.

He said that one in three restaurants faced closure unless immediate steps were taken.