Who'll feed the tourist?

THE AD placed in several British national newspapers said it all: "A creative and hard working Head Chef is required for Dublin's busiest Italian Brasserie. The Chef must be able to create authentic Italian Cuisine under a great deal of pressure for this 100 plus seater restaurant. Minimum one year contract."

With more than 280,000 people officially on the dole, why should a Dublin restaurant owner have to advertise outside the country for a chef? Because, with only a few notable exceptions, good chefs with high standards "are not Irish and are as rare as a white truffle in the Bog of Allen", believes May Frisby, owner of Pasta Fresca, who placed the ad.

"Many Irish chefs don't have the training or the interest and it is difficult to get quality work from them. There are too few who are passionate about food, and too many who won't open a cook book, or change with the times by getting into healthier eating. They are more interested in when they will have their days off totally uninspired. In Ireland cooking is not regarded as a profession as in Europe. Here they jump in because they think that if they can boil an egg they can cook."

And she adds one final word: "I'd pay an arm and a leg for the guy who will do the job, but you can't get that guy.

In a country which relies on tourism for eight per cent of its GDP, the difficulty in finding high calibre people to work in food production isn't just the complaint of one restaurant owner - it's a full scale crisis.

"Good chefs are like gold dust," admits Ms Grainne O'Malley of CERT, which trained more than 2,000 people last year including 1,148 chefs. CERT's research shows that 30 per cent of employers have had difficulty finding chefs.

We have a tourism boom - and we haven't got people we need of the calibre and training required by the industry to run it. It's not only the lack of chefs that is a problem - restaurant and hotel owners are also having problems finding people to wait on tables, tend the bars, clean up, cover the reception desks and clean the hotel rooms.

This could ultimately be disastrous in a country which relies on tourism as one of the main planks of its economy. At least £1.67 billion will come into the country in foreign exchange from tourism this year based on last year's figures, but already in the first three months of this year tourism was up 13 per cent, ahead of the growth forecast of 10 per cent. There are now 100,000 people employed in the business to cater for a burgeoning number of visitors which has doubled in less than a decade, from 2.1 million in 1987 to 4.2 million in 1995.

"The expansion of the industry has been enormous. We've created 35,000 new jobs in the last four to five years and to service that expansion with trained staff is impossible," says Ms Anna Carroll, head of education and research at CERT. "We simply can't keep pace with expansion of industry and that makes it extremely difficult in industry to get trained chefs."

A REPORT commissioned by CERT on the attitudes of secondary school students towards the tourism industry found that the "poor image of the industry, especially catering, must be addressed in order to attract quality personnel". To put it bluntly, the research found that teachers tended to hand out the brochures on tourism careers as an afterthought following the Leaving Cert results.

Only seven per cent of 1,260 secondary and vocational pupils surveyed specifically expressed interest in a tourism career. Furthermore, while pupils, parents and teachers considered the industry important for the economy, employment and regional development, a third of the pupils were ignorant of the industry and few parents and even fewer teachers - would encourage pupils to enter the industry.

The Minister for Tourism and Trade, Mr Kenny, believes that "the Achilles heel of the tourism industry has emerged as the inability of the sector to attract into its workforce the numbers it needs to keep pace with expanding business, and this despite intensive recruitment campaigns by CERT and a steady increase in the numbers trained each year. Allied to that tourism has been losing to other industries too many of those young people already recruited."

Ms Carroll says that the shrinking pool of school leavers have so many options now in terms of a huge variety of courses and vocational programmes that employers are having to compete for them. CERT believes that it will have to sharpen its recruitment methods and provide longer more practiced training. It also thinks that the State needs to reduce tax and PRSI and provide funding directly to employers for training.

But the tourism industry, CERT believes, has to make itself more attractive to young workers, by improving pay, conditions and staff/management relations; introducing rewards/incentives and career paths; improving the industry image and providing more training.

While there are many restaurateurs who like May Frisby, will pay "an arm and a leg" for the best chefs they can find be cause they know their businesses depend on maintaining high standards, there are many others who will pay as little as possible for chefs cooking mediocre food and this has given the catering industry low status in the eyes of many young people looking for careers.

Tourism also has another major factor going against it: shift work and irregular, unsocial hours.

"There is a problem at craft level where it is very difficult to get people says Ms Kay Caball, president of the Restaurants Association of Ireland. "We are all expanding our businesses and our requirements are increasing for people but young people can pick and choose where they want to work."

In her experience, they don't want to work split shifts and prefer a planned social life to a career where they may have to work every Friday and Saturday night for weeks or even months on end during peak tourist season.

"Extra money does not compensate them because they know they can get it anyhow. Even when you offer them higher wages to work on a Saturday night they won't work," she says.

CERT's research did show, however, chat once young people joined the tourism industry and stayed long term, they were very satisfied with pay, conditions and promotion. The problem is really in attracting newcomers, for whom tourism is not as attractive as some other industries, which means that sometimes they are not staying long enough to take up promotional opportunities.

Few school leavers with the qualities which tourism bosses seek view waiting tables at a starting rate of £3.50 per hour as any more than a short term fix.

However, both the Restaurant Association of Ireland and the Irish Hotels Federation argue that pay is good in the area, and that it is the few who exploit cheap, young labour who give the area a bad name. Restaurants and hotels are supposed to comply with Labour Committee, which has deemed that a first year cook earns £82.92 a week, with the rate rising to £165.83 for a trained cook after three years training. A first year waitress earns £78.19 a week, rising to £130.32 a week in the third year and beyond. A barman or barmaid earns £83.54 a week in the first year, rising to £139.24 with three years' experience.

Good rates? Or a fool's paradise?

CERT's research has found that three quarters of those in the industry were earning less than £10,000 a year, compared to the average industrial wage of £14,000. The hours worked for such pay were particularly long, especially for professional cookery, bar service and supervisory staff in hotels, restaurants and bars. Just 37 per cent of graduates worked between 41 and 50 hours a week, while a further 20 per cent worked between 51 and 80 hours - compared to a national average of 40.8 hours a week for industrial workers.

Mr John Power, president of the Irish Hotels Federation, believes that in reality the wages are not as bad as the levels indicated by the survey, which included fast food restaurants, made them out to be. A porter with three years' experience makes £157 a week and has the option of becoming a trainee manager and moving up the ladder. Chefs with five or six years' experience can write their own ticket, he says.

"By and large, hotels are getting their staff" he says. Many hotels now offer pensions to their employees, as well as perks such as travel, meeting people and "the kind of training which would ensure that they could walk into any hotel in the world and get a job tomorrow".

GOOD employers are facing the reality that young people expect more and are adapting to the crisis by improving remuneration packages, hours and work practises to attract high calibre employees. Mr David Butt, manager of the Hibernian Hotel, Ballsbridge, Dublin, has raised the value of his remuneration packages by 40 per cent alone this year and has also completed a "business processes reorganisation" of all areas of the hotel in preparation for his current recruitment campaign. As part of the reorganisation he has been able to make shift schedules five to six weeks in advance so that workers can make firm plans in their social and personal lives.

There is a "huge shortage" of people to work in food production, including qualified chefs, he says. "It's becoming an international problem and it's stemming form the fact that people in the age group 21-24 years old are hugely ambitious and are spreading their wings and going as far as the West Coast of the US and the Far East to gain qualifications where they can experience high standards. I think they will be coming back here in three or four years and when they do, they'll be demanding high salaries."

Mr Dick Bourke, general manager of the Jury's Hotel Group says that greater competition by employers for school leavers means that even hotels offering the best employment conditions have to work harder to fill places. The majority are good employers in the hotel industry, he believes, but it is still extremely difficult to fill food service positions. As a career path, waiting tables is viewed by most young people as a dead end summer job, not as an opportunity that can lead to restaurant management. The industry has to be more pro active in pushing an image of itself to school leavers and teachers as being a good career where you can progress, Mr Bourke believes.

Mr David O'Sullivan, manager of the Newpark Hotel in Kilkenny, believes that international competition for ambitious young Irish people wanting to work in tourism is the real problem and that pay has very little to do with it. "My personal view is that young people are more mobile and the job opportunities are global. Young people go to the US and work every hour God sends for relatively small pay."

THE tourism jobs - and the high pay - are there for the taking here in the Republic for young people with commitment. Geraldine Doyle is a 21 year old, CERT trained, third year commis chef who is currently working under head chef Colin O Daly at Roly's Bistro in Dublin. She says she became "addicted" to the excitement of the restaurant business when she started her first job at the Bayview Hotel, Courtown, Co Wexford, while she was still in school. The unsocial hours don't bother her and she is willing to work hard for relatively little pay in the knowledge that young chefs who are enthusiastic and willing to clock up enough experience can eventually name their price and become sought after head chefs.

If there is one thing on which all the sectors involved in trying to cope with the recruitment crisis brought on by the tourism boom agree, it's that we need a lot more Geraldine Doyles. When fully trained they may be "like gold dust" - but that just means that we will have to treat them and pay them accordingly if Irish tourism is to capitalise on the current boom and not squander its chance.