Hotels lobbying chief Paul Gallagher: ‘Our lobbying was behind doors, not on radio’

“You could be the lounge boy today and be the general manager in 20 years time on a quarter of a million euros,” says Paul Gallagher, chief executive of the Irish Hotels Federation, of a career in hospitality.

Young people with aspirations of networking prominent politicians may be drawn to pursue a career in law, finance or property development. For nearly 50 years, Gallagher has been doing so in hospitality.

From humble beginnings working as a lounge boy in Madigan’s Pub in Donnybrook, Dublin 4 during the late 1970s to now serving as chief executive of the Irish Hotels Federation (IHF), Gallagher has experienced the length and breadth of the industry.

The bulk of his CV accounts for the 27 years he spent as general manager of Buswells Hotel. “A tremendous hotel, considered the third house of the Oireachtas ... years ago, the bell that used to call votes would ring in the hotel, somehow,” he says.

The hotel occupies four townhouses on Molesworth Street and stands at the corner of Kildare Street. Its bar is no more than a hop, skip and a stumble to the gates of Leinster House, where legislation affecting the entirety of the State is enacted.

“You end up becoming familiar with all the TDs,” Gallagher says, as well as their schemes: “a heave on a taoiseach, the formation of new governments”.

“For this job, clearly, if you know politicians – and I would know a lot of them – it’s quite helpful. If I have to advocate, and I do in my role, it is easier if I already know somebody at the other end of the phone.”

Those phone calls are often made from his office near Dartmouth Square in Ranelagh, Dublin 6. On a road that resembles an AI-generated image prompted by the term “quiet, leafy suburb”, the IHF’s headquarters is seamlessly aligned at the end of a row of redbrick townhouses.

In the first floor’s front room stands a long board table, with wooden plaques dispersed between the two sash windows and the names of former IHF presidents carved in gold plating across them. It looks like a small golf club’s diningroom, Gallagher jokes.

His office is in what would have been a secondary bedroom on the same floor, had the building continued to be used as a family home.

“I prepared for this role by meeting with some key individuals in the industry, some currently working in it and some who have retired from it, to get a perspective from them also as to what their sense is of where this business is going in the future and what they anticipate a new CEO doing to make sure that we get there,” Gallagher says.

He called into small hotels in rural areas around the country to speak with managers over coffee to get a sense of what they wanted for him, and met the major hotel chains (Dalata, Winward, Cliste) over lunch to gauge their requirements as well. “They have a different set of needs,” he says.

“The very smallest hotel needs the most support from me, and the larger ones don’t. The small hotels and guest houses would need assistance around legal matters, operational standards, safety authorities, environmental health officers and so on.

“Whilst the bigger guys would say things like the 9 per cent Vat rate on food – I mean, how important was that for them? And if we achieve that, what do we next look for? What are the next big things that make a difference?

“But there was a lot of commonality of what all the groups would say about the sector in general,” he adds.

One such shared struggle has been the price of food and, until July 1st this year, its heightened Vat rate. While last year’s budget dropped the tax from 13.5 per cent to 9 per cent, Gallagher says many hotels who were dependent on food sales were doing so “at a very, very marginal profit”.

“It was Peter Burke who championed that for us,” he continues, referring to the Fine Gael TD who was promoted to Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment just three weeks after Gallagher himself was appointed to his current role.

“A lot of our lobbying was behind doors – we weren’t really on the national radio. Our colleagues at the restaurant association probably were the most vocal, of course their sole business is food and drink while we have a more mixed portfolio of sales.

“I always felt that if we were to lobby one-on-one to try to influence government and ministers, that was probably the best place to do it. It wasn’t really for the radio, there wouldn’t have been a lot of sympathy out there for hotels,” Gallagher says.

“This was about viability, if they didn’t really get that support in the budget, we really felt that there was a real threat to a large sway of small hotels right around Ireland.”

Focused

Throughout the lobbying push, he says he was focused on “a rural, small town hotel” that serves as a “come-all hotel” for its local community in hosting weddings, funerals, communions and other life events. “More of their turnover would be from food and beverage rather than rooms – probably 70 per cent food and beverage and 30 per cent rooms,” Gallagher estimates.

“When I’m thinking about the 9 per cent, I have a hotel in my head. I understand it’s very labour intensive, it’s very hands-on, it’s probably also very exhausting for the owner because food inflation over the last four or five years has become extraordinary. It’s so difficult for them to be able to sit down and say ‘let me look and review my food costs’.”

Gallagher continues: “For us, it was a success in that we got the 9 per cent Vat rate. We had to wait six months after the budget to get it [the policy was announced on October 8th, 2025 but enacted on July 1st, 2026], but Peter Burke and the Government have committed that this will stay for the length of the term of this Government.”

Despite the policy change announced only eight months after taking up his current position, Gallagher makes no secret that the IHF will continue to push for reforms to facilitate the sector doing business.

“We recognise that this support of a 9 per cent Vat rate is enormously important – that doesn’t mean we won’t have asks in the future for other things we want,” he says.

Gallagher notes that the industry “used to enjoy a 9 per cent Vat rate on accommodation as well. We don’t any more, which is a bit of an annoyance.”

Founded in 1937, the IHF is the representative body for more than 900 hotels and guest houses employing some 75,000 workers around the State. It provides members with training programmes for operational upskilling and career development, as well as advice on legal and industrial relations matters.

Perhaps its most high-stakes practice, however, is its lobbying of Government ministers and State agencies to shape tourism policy in favour of the hotel business. But where to direct that advocacy has not always been clearcut.

Over the decades, successive governments have tossed and turned over where to place tourism in a ministerial portfolio. In the mid 1990s, it was lumped together with trade. Then, with sport and recreation. In 2002, the arts were added to the mix, but for one year was replaced with the broader term of culture.

From 2011 to 2020, transport, tourism and sport were somehow strung together as though they had anything to do with one another. Only transport survived the 2020 cabinet reshuffle in getting its own brief. For the next five years the department for tourism, culture, arts, gaeltacht, sport and media fell on Catherine Martin, then of the Green Party.

Last year, Burke took over as Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, with the tourism sector returned to a business department for the first time since the 1980s.

That is “the correct department”, Gallagher says. “We would have advocated that tourism belonged in an employment department. We were in the department of culture and sport and we never really felt that we were taken seriously. So, now we are in a serious department [and] we must make our case in a businesslike manner, and we do.”

Tying in with another subsection of its new department, he says hotels provide incredible employment opportunities, particularly for young people looking to get a foot on the career ladder.

“The sky is the limit, really, and because we do an awful lot of acquired learning, it means everybody has an equal chance to get that top job.

“Think about a resort hotel, it would have about 43 different careers. We employ graduates, we would have accountants, engineers, sustainability managers, spa therapists, chefs – they’re some of the qualified ones where they may have a degree, but everybody else won’t have a degree.

“Everybody else will probably join as a school leaver or in school during the summer holidays working in a bar. We have a great opportunity to bring young people into the business, some of them get the bug and think this is fantastic.”

Gallagher continues: “One in 10 jobs in the Irish economy is in hospitality and, in our business, we employ about 75,000 people in hotels. So we are a very large employer in the hospitality business and, while some people would come in and be on a lower wage, you could be the lounge boy today and be the general manager in 20 years time on a quarter of a million euros, or the head chef on €150,000.”

New hotels

One aspect of the industry that is, perhaps, less straightforward than climbing the company pay scale is constructing the hotel itself. “What we have in Ireland now is a distorted market for the development of new hotel accommodation. It’s all in cities.

“What you notice very quickly is that there is really no new hotel development outside of large urban areas in Ireland – and that isn’t good for tourism. If we are going to grow tourism in regions and in different seasons, we need more hotel stock right across the country.”

“They don’t have to be huge, but we have to have new inventory.”

This is where government can, and Gallagher says should, step in through various means. Accessing “low cost finance” through the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF), a State agency directed by the National Treasury Management Agency ), is one option.

“I think a dedicated scheme just for hotels would be useful. That’s EU-guaranteed money that government would use through pillar banks to help bring about the creation of investment into new product and new register accommodation.

“There could be a local authority holiday on rates, perhaps for 10 years,” he adds. “Hotels are seen as the golden egg of a rate pair for most local authorities. We are substantial assets and we have a long life ahead of us. Typically a hotel would trade for 30 or 40 years and the local authority would get rates every year for 40 years.

“The cost of construction is a big problem and I’ve seen that right across the economy, not just in tourism but also residential apartments and offices.”

While certain restrictions imposed by the State’s intricate planning process prevent some hotels from refurbishing in the way they would prefer, Gallagher thinks “there have been some moves to address the planning problems, but obviously access or connections to utilities is going to be tricky”.

“That’s why I think hotels in the regions who have potential could put on more rooms, because they’re already on server sites – it’s a bit more difficult on greenfield sites. But there are possibilities of bringing other buildings into tourism that are already sitting there. Repurposing some buildings may be another option,” he says.

With options aplenty and enough ideas to fill the back bedroom of a Georgian townhouse, Gallagher is well placed to lead the industry into the future. The previous two CEOs of the IHF , Tim Fenn and John Power, led the organisation for 14 years each.

If Gallagher is to follow suit, that would bring him to the end of the 2030s. Where does he see the industry then?

“The emphasis for hotels will have to be on great design, great teams operating it, delivering exceptional customer service and giving people that lovely touch point for when they leave a hotel and they think ‘that was a superb experience, I feel refreshed, I feel revitalised’.

“And if they’re from overseas, they go home and become an advocate for Irish tourism – they tell their colleagues ‘God, if you want to go somewhere and just really feel in touch with yourself and with the world, be at ease and have a great experience, I think Ireland and Irish hospitality will deliver that absolutely, hand over fist.”

CV

Name: Paul Gallagher

Job: Chief executive of the Irish Hotels Federation

Age: 62

Lives: In Clonskeagh, Dublin 14

Family: Wife Mariea and two adult daughters (both accountants), Katie and Jessica.

Hobbies: “Rugby is a huge interest of mine, I’m an avid Leinster supporter.”

Something you might expect: “I’m passionate about strengthening our industry through training, developing people and building resilience. I’m pragmatic, frank and direct – sometimes too direct – but always fair, respectful and committed to making a difference.”

Something that might surprise: “I’m a keen competitive sea swimmer. This year, I placed seventh in the men’s Liffey Swim and was mentioned in this newspaper’s report on the race. Not bad for my 20th time competing.”