Ireland’s catering sector is already facing “death by a thousand cuts” and new restrictions expected to be proposed by Nphet later today will close many businesses, Social Democrat co-leader, Catherine Murphy, has said.

But Tánaiste and Enterprise Minister, Leo Varadkar, has given the strongest signal yet that special aid is likely for the hospitality sector.

Ms Murphy told the Dáil that the late-night entertainment sector had effectively now been shut down after being allowed open for just three weeks.

She said people were already heeding expert advice to significantly reduce levels of social contacts and she knew of one catering business which had 80pc of bookings cancelled and expected the same would happen to the final 20pc.

The Kildare North TD said there was an urgent need for income supports for catering workers and wage and other subsidies for their employers.

She said big Christmas trade had been hoped for to help these struggling business get through the lean period of January and February but that hope was now gone.

“But supports are either being withdrawn or eroded,” Ms Murphy said. She added that the Government appeared to be applying a principle of “Darwinian business survival of the fittest”.

Replying for the Government, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said he accepted what Ms Murphy had said and the catering sector risked losing its “Christmas harvest.”

“Even though we did not close any events, the people are voting with their feet,” Mr Varadkar said.

The Fine Gael leader said that at its height 650,000 workers were supported by various payments but this number was now dramatically reduced. He said despite all the difficulties Ireland had a record of 2.4 million people at work.

Mr Varadkar said the Government would await Nphet’s advice later today and it would not make sense to announce supports before that happened. But it would also look at supports targeted at sectors such as catering. “I think it is important that everything is targeted at the sectors which need it,” he said.

The Tánaiste said a decision on this was likely very soon.

Mr Varadkar later told the Dáil that the wage subsidy scheme had cost the taxpayer €400m to date and was the biggest State intervention since the bank rescue schemes of over a decade ago. He stressed that it was not currently applied to the hospitality, entertainments, arts or aviation sectors.