Short-Term Letting and Tourism Bill 2026: Second Stage (Resumed)

I will take your advice on board, a Cheann Comhairle. I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this Second Stage debate. At the outset, I want to acknowledge that there is a legitimate public policy objective behind this legislation. Every Member of this House is deeply conscious of the housing crisis. Every one of us knows families who cannot find accommodation, young people who have been locked out of home ownership, workers travelling enormous distances because they cannot access housing near their jobs, and, most tragically, the growing number of individuals and families forced into emergency accommodation. No responsible politician can ignore those realities. For that reason, I understand the Government's argument that the regulation of short-term letting should not be confined solely to our largest cities. I can appreciate the rationale behind including towns with populations of 20,000 or more. Housing pressures are no longer restricted to Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford. We are seeing increasing pressure in large regional towns throughout the State. However, if we are serious about tackling homelessness and increasing housing supply, then enforcement resources must be focused primarily where the crisis is at its most acute. The figures speak for themselves. Today, more than 17,000 people are living in emergency accommodation. Of those, almost 15,000 are concentrated within the major urban centres of Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford and their surrounding metropolitan areas. That is where the pressure is greatest. That is where the demand is greatest. That is where homelessness is most severe. That is where enforcement must be most vigorous. If local authorities and regulatory bodies have finite resources - they always do - those resources should be directed first to those areas where the return is highest and where even modest increases in long-term housing supply could make a meaningful difference. I fear that this legislation risks creating a situation where scarce enforcement resources are spread too thinly across the entire country. In policymaking, there is always a danger of trying to be everything to everyone. Sometimes the result is that we end up being effective nowhere. I want a system that targets abuse. I want a system that addresses large-scale commercial operators who have effectively removed housing stock from the private rental market. I want a system that ensures compliance, but I also want proportionality. There is a world of difference between a major investor operating multiple short-term rental properties in a city experiencing severe housing shortages and a homeowner who occasionally rents part of their principal primary residence. Those distinctions matter. Good legislation recognises such distinctions. Poor legislation ignores them. The Government itself recognises that housing pressures are not uniform across the country. If that is true, and it is, then enforcement priorities should not be uniform either. A one-size-fits-all enforcement approach risks imposing significant administrative burdens on smaller communities where short-term letting may play an important role in sustaining local tourism while yielding very little additional housing supply. The central question must always be this: where can intervention deliver the greatest public benefit? The answer is obvious. It is in the major cities. It is in the areas where emergency accommodation numbers are highest. It is in the areas where rental shortages are most acute. It is in the areas where housing demand vastly exceeds supply. I therefore believe the Government must make it absolutely clear that enforcement policy will be targeted and prioritised according to housing need. There is another issue with this Bill that deserves much greater scrutiny. That issue is planning. Throughout this debate we have heard the Government speak about planning compliance. We have heard Ministers say that short-term letting activity must comply with planning requirements, yet I have to ask a very simple question. Why now? Why has this suddenly become the great planning issue of our time? Short-term letting has existed in one form or another for years. Platforms have operated openly. Properties have been advertised publicly. Successive Governments were fully aware of the sector, so why are we only now being told that there is a planning crisis associated with short-term accommodation? Why was this not addressed years ago? Why was it not clarified years ago? Why did government after government fail to provide certainty? Why were homeowners, small tourism providers and local authorities left operating under a cloud of ambiguity? These are not unreasonable questions. In fact, they are questions the public have every right to ask. The Government now wants us to impose additional requirements and regulation, but where was the urgency when clarity was needed? Where was the urgency when local authorities were seeking guidance? Where was the urgency when people were trying to understand what rules applied? One cannot help but feel that this legislation is attempting to cure symptoms rather than address causes. That brings us to the heart of the matter. Why is the spotlight being trained so heavily on self-catering accommodation and short-term lets? Why has this become such a major political focus? The answer is uncomfortable for the Government, but it needs to be stated. It is because it provides a convenient distraction from the Government's failure to build enough homes. That is the uncomfortable truth behind much of this debate. Successive Governments have presided over one of the most severe housing crises in the history of the State. Housing completions failed to match demand. Planning systems remained cumbersome. Infrastructure delivery lagged behind. Affordable housing targets were missed. Social housing waiting lists continue to grow. Private rents have spiralled. House prices escalated beyond the reach of ordinary working families. Homelessness reached record levels. Those are the facts. Against this backdrop, the Government has increasingly looked for explanations elsewhere. Migrants working in our essential services are blamed. Planning appeals are blamed. Vacant homes are blamed. Now, short-term lets are increasingly being blamed. Of course, all of these factors can play a role but none of them explain the scale of the crisis. The primary reason Ireland has a housing emergency is painfully simple. We have not built enough homes for a very long time. That is the central failure. No amount of regulatory activity aimed at short-term letting can hide that reality. No amount of administrative enforcement can substitute for housing delivery. No amount of political spin can alter the basic arithmetic of supply and demand. The Government cannot regulate itself out of a housing shortage. It must build its way out. That is the challenge and the test and that is where the focus should remain. Indeed, I find it extraordinary that some of the loudest voices calling for even more planning scrutiny of homeowners were remarkably silent when genuine planning abuses were occurring in years gone by. It is an awful pity that the Government, Fianna Fáil in particular, was not nearly as energised about planning enforcement during the days of the Galway tent. It is an awful pity they were not displaying the same level of enthusiasm for regulation when developers appeared to enjoy extraordinary influence over planning and development decisions. It is an awful pity they were not demanding rigorous oversight when powerful interests seemed able to secure rezoning decisions and planning outcomes that benefited them enormously. Many people remember those years. People remember an era when ordinary citizens often felt disconnected, and some still do, from the planning process. People remember a culture in which development frequently appeared to proceed with inadequate scrutiny. The irony is striking. Today, the Government wants us to believe that the great planning challenge facing Ireland is the retired couple renting a self-catering property. Today, the Government wants us to believe that the central planning priority is the homeowner engaging in occasional short-term letting. Where was this zeal when genuine systemic planning issues demanded attention? Some still do today. Where was this relentless focus on compliance? Where was this passion for enforcement? Where was this determination to regulate? The public are entitled to ask those questions and they are entitled to receive answers. I want to be clear that this is not an argument against regulation. It is not an argument against registration, transparency or enforcement. Rules are important and compliance matters. Consumer protection matters, as does public confidence, but good regulation must and has to be proportionate and it must be evidence-based, targeted and fair. Above all, it must recognise that not every short-term letting arrangement is the same. Home sharing is not the same as commercial investment. A principal private residence is not the same as a professionally managed portfolio. An occasional host is not the same as a corporate operator. Legislation that blurs those distinctions risks doing real damage to ordinary people who are simply trying to supplement household income at a time of extraordinary financial pressure. Many homeowners are facing significant mortgage repayments. Many families are facing soaring costs. Rural tourism providers are struggling with rising operating expenses. For some, short-term letting provides an important supplementary income stream. For others, it supports local employment and local tourism. For many areas, particularly outside the major cities, self-catering accommodation forms an important part of the tourism offering. That reality should not be overlooked. Ireland's tourism product depends on diversity. Hotels play a critical role. Guesthouses play a critical role. Bed and breakfast accommodation plays a critical role. Self-catering accommodation plays a critical role, as does home sharing. A successful tourism sector requires all of these components working together. Therefore, while I support reasonable regulation, I do not support the assumption that every short-term letting property represents housing stock that would otherwise immediately enter the long-term rental market. That assumption is often overstated. It is not always supported by evidence and, in many cases, it simply does not reflect reality. The challenge for legislators is to distinguish carefully between properties that genuinely impact housing availability and those that do not. This requires nuance and balance. It requires a willingness to move beyond simplistic narratives. As legislators, we should be capable of that. The housing crisis, of course, deserves serious solutions and the public deserve serious solutions. Headlines will not solve homelessness. Scapegoating will not solve homelessness. Only increasing housing supply on a substantial and sustained basis will solve homelessness. That simply means building more homes. It means accelerating infrastructural delivery, addressing construction capacity and providing certainty within the planning system. As we know, of course, that also means that the local authorities have the resources they absolutely need. However, it means first and foremost focusing relentlessly on housing delivery. If we fail in those tasks, no amount of regulation of short-term lets will compensate. As this Bill progresses, I hope the Minister will carefully consider amendments that strengthen the distinction between large-scale commercial operators and genuine home-sharing arrangements. I hope the Minister will provide greater clarity regarding planning requirements. I hope he will commit to targeting enforcement where housing pressures are genuinely most severe, and I hope the Government will recognise that while short-term letting may form part of the wider housing debate, it is not the primary cause of our housing crisis. Ultimately, the answer to Ireland's housing emergency is not to search endlessly for new villains. The answer, once again, is to build more homes. It always has been and it always will be. Until we confront that reality honestly, the housing crisis will persist regardless of how many regulations we introduce. For that reason, while I recognise the intention behind this Bill and support targeted efforts to return the housing stock to areas of greatest need, I believe it requires further refinement, greater proportionality, stronger differentiation between categories of providers and a much clearer focus on genuine housing pressures in our major urban centres. That is the approach that will best serve both housing policy and tourism policy, that is the approach that will best serve communities, and that is the approach I urge the Minister and this House to adopt.

Táim buíoch don Aire agus don Aire Stáit as a bheith anseo inniu. I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill as the Labour Party housing spokesperson. I also belatedly welcome the fact that the Government is moving, albeit with great reluctance, to regulate short-term lets, which is primarily to comply with EU data sharing rules, which obligate the Government to set up standardised digital registration system for short-term rental accommodation. There has been zero to little urgency from the Government on this despite the overwhelming evidence of the damage the unregulated short-term letting system in this country is causing to the private rental market. Fáilte Ireland set the infrastructure up for the register nearly four years ago and the previous Government initially said it had intended to do this in 2023, nearly four years ago. Threshold report after Threshold report has shown how the unchecked growth of short-term lets strips homes from long-term rental supply, drives up rents and forces workers, students and families out of their communities, and these warnings were repeatedly ignored. Now, it has taken the Government nearly two years to come up with these proposals that, albeit well intentioned, and I acknowledge that, have more holes in them than the hull of Titanic. It is nearly a decade ago that the Seanad first debated a Private Members' Bill by my colleague, former Minister of State, Kevin Humphreys, which would have ensured at the time that these lets would be classified as a commercial enterprise and would require planning permission, which would have reversed a trend that has exploded in urban areas of homes being used as hotels in the middle of a housing crisis. The restrictions that were introduced in 2019 by Eoghan Murphy could have worked if they had included any meaningful sanctions, which they did not. The issue here is with multibillion-euro hosting platforms robbing our cities and towns of housing and hollowing out communities with no structural enforcement or financial liabilities. It is not with individuals running an Airbnb or a small business. Politics is about choices and my priority and my choice here is housing and, unfortunately, what is being proposed here is not going to bring enough housing back into long-term use. I am disappointed that the Government has continued with its proposal to exempt towns of less than 20,000. This is a disappointing retreat from the initial proposed cap of 10,000. At present, we are in a situation where rents have spiralled out of control, where there are only 12 properties available to rent on Daft within HAP limits and when homelessness has never been higher. Our priority and political choice must be long-term housing. There are anywhere up to 35,000 properties advertised for rent as short-term lets in this country. Threshold carried out research in 2025, which showed up to 8,000 entire properties where the host operated more than one property. These are not humble B and B operators. These are landlords masquerading as hoteliers. They should be treated, from a legislative point of view, as professional accommodation providers. A serious response to this crisis must come with meaningful teeth. It must deal with the role of platforms in the first instance, and I welcome the fact the Bill will provide for a graduated enforcement framework with fixed-payment notices, summary offences and sanction regimes. I also welcome the financial sanctions that will include fines of up to 2% of annual worldwide turnover . That is welcome, because companies such as Airbnb continue to allow unregulated and, frankly, illegal properties to be advertised despite clear obligations under the 2019 legislation. That is unacceptable. Platforms need to be held accountable for what they host, and illegal short-term lets must be removed and not quietly tolerated. This is where I am more critical and where the Bill falls short. The two-year transition period for areas with a population of 20,000 is far too long. If you have been knowingly operating a short-term let that is not compliant, then you do not deserve two years in which to rectify what you know is wrong. That is simply a joke. This allows those who may ultimately fail to obtain planning permission to continue trading in breach of planning until 2029. As for the seven-year grandfather clause, that might as well be called a great-grandfather clause because of the length of time it will continue to lock properties out of the long-term rental market. Exempting operators who have run short-term lets for seven years contradicts the entire purpose of the Bill, which must be to return homes back into the long-term rental or purchase market during a severe housing crisis. This is where the Government is being captured by lobbyists. Let me be clear: the grandfathering or the long running of ipso facto hotels in a housing crisis will render this framework well-meaning but useless, with more holes in it than the Titanic. We also need to make sure that we protect Gaeltacht communities. Tá géarghá chomh maith le leasú chun ceantracha Gaeltachta a chosaint mar tá fadhb ollmhór ann sa Ghaeltacht maidir le lóistín gearrthréimhseach. Is bagairt ollmhór é lóistín gearrthréimhseach don Ghaeltacht. Beidh mé in ann teacht ar ais chuig an leasú sin ag Céim an Choiste.

I welcome this Bill and the Government's intent to bring clear rules and transparency to short-term letting. However, we have to call a spade a spade: a blunt urban approach will not work in rural Ireland. The housing pressures in our major cities are entirely different from the reality on the ground in rural communities, and our planning framework must recognise that. In Galway East, from Kinvarra and Gort to Athenry, Tuam and Loughrea, tourism is an economic lifeline. When visitors stay in rural, self-catering accommodation, they sustain a village, the local pub, the cafe and independent attractions. In areas without major hotels, like those I represent in east Galway, these properties are our tourism infrastructure. The vast majority of these lets in settlements of fewer than 20,000 people are not really corporate operations. Rather, they are primarily dual-use properties such as renovated farm outbuildings, vernacular cottages or annexes within the curtilage of a family home. They are used by the family part of the year and let out the rest to supplement farm or household income. They were never going to be long-term residential rentals. It is important to recognise that. If an apartment in Dublin city is being rented out as an Airbnb and was originally built and granted planning permission as an apartment, that is how it should operate - as an apartment and not as a short-term let or as hotel accommodation. However, in rural Ireland, a lot of innovative ideas have come forward with old farm buildings being converted into really nice experiences for people to have an old Irish cultural experience. I welcome the two-year transition window and the distinction drawn in the national planning statement for towns of fewer than 20,000 people, but if we want families to step forward and regularise their position, we must address the planning mechanics. If the proposed retention process inadvertently reclassifies a home as a purely commercial property, the unintended consequences could be severe. It could lead to the devaluation of properties, the blocking of standard residential mortgages from the pillar banks, and the triggering of disproportionate commercial rates and certifications on what is essentially a part-time activity. If that happens, people simply will not engage and rural Ireland will risk losing vital tourism bed capacity overnight. That is where my main concern would be - if we were to lose capacity. In the spirit of constructive engagement, I put three specific questions to the Minister of State and the officials so that small operators have absolute certainty. On the planning status, will the simplified retention process grant permission as a residential property with ancillary commercial use rather than a full outright change to purely commercial use? On the finance and future sale elements, what explicit protections are being put in place with the Department of Finance and the pillar banks so that dual-use properties, particularly those within the curtilage of a primary residence, can still be bought and refinanced on standard residential mortgages without destroying their asset value? Regarding reversion, if an operator subsequently decides to stop short-term letting, will there be an equally simple automatic mechanism to revert the planning status back to standard residential without requiring an expensive, uncertain, full planning application? My objective here remains balanced. We have to protect long-term residential housing supply where the demand is critical while protecting rural tourism where it keeps communities alive. I urge the Minister of State to take these technical clarifications on board as the Bill progresses to ensure that rural enterprise is supported but not inadvertently undermined.

The Minister of State is welcome. This Bill is a balance of competing demands and viewpoints on housing and tourism. It recognises that in our large urban areas, there are particular pressures where the housing situation is more concentrated and problematic. Therefore, the Government has decided as part of this Bill to support those individuals. However, rural Ireland is different. In my area of Galway West, particularly in the Connemara area, the Aran Islands and Inishbofin, it is a different scenario. Things have evolved over time to a situation whereby, without any great fuss being made, people started doing short-term lettings. That has not gone through the planning process. There was a genuine concern among many people that this would be a clamp-down, so I welcome the initiative in the Bill to protect these businesses, which is what they are, because tourism is hugely important as an indigenous industry in Connemara in particular and on our offshore islands. If there was an absolute clamp-down, as some would like, it would decimate those rural communities. We are talking about small rural communities where tourism is hugely important. I am not talking about the cities or large towns, but the small rural communities. For example, you have situations on the Aran Islands where somebody had their family home and they have since moved away but come back every so often. They come back at Christmas or for summer holidays with their family. In the intervening periods, they may rent the house out for a number of weeks. Those situations have to be protected. You have many situations whereby people may have inherited the family house. They want to keep that for their children and for the future, and in the meantime, they rent it out for short-term letting to generate a few euro for themselves. There is nothing wrong with using the assets you have. However, there is a difference in the cities and the Government has recognised that in this Bill. I have met with Gaeltacht groups. Tá a fhios agam go bhfuil deacrachtaí acu agus go bhfuil siad ag lorg athruithe sa Bhille seo. Tá sé sin ceart go leor agus beimid in ann é sin a phlé. However, the Connemara and Aran Islands Tourism Network is very much concerned with what could have happened with this. The seven-year grandfathering is certainly welcome. The understanding that there is a difference between the urban and rural situations is also certainly welcome. This is a balanced approach. Some people have talked about delays. I suspect that the Department of housing may have a stronger view on this. The Department of tourism also recognises that tourism is a hugely important indigenous industry for rural Ireland, which needs to be protected. The impact of a blanket ending of short-term letting would have been huge and consequential in a negative fashion for those businesses. There are a number of things. There is reference to Galway city and suburbs. I assume that refers to the area of Galway city itself and those areas just outside. Even though they are rural, they would not be included in this because they are proximate to Galway city. There are some concerns about the timeline, the one month for registration. If someone has to get planning permission and that is pending, do they have to stop the listing come 1 January? There are a number of issues that need to be clarified as the Bill progresses, including on Committee Stage. However, the general thrust of the Bill, which presents a balanced approach to urban areas and large towns and smaller rural communities and offshore islands, is hugely important. I welcome the engagement the Minister has had and the decisions made by the Cabinet that we see in this Bill.

I commend the Minister of State and the other Ministers in the Department on their work on this Bill. I come from a hospitality background and so I understand the enormous contribution that tourism makes, particularly in Mayo, from Westport and Achill down to Belmullet and Ballina, but also in communities right along the Wild Atlantic Way. However, I also acknowledge the very real housing pressures in Mayo and across the country. In my weekly constituency clinic, housing is consistently the biggest issue. Young people cannot find anywhere to rent. Families are searching for long-term accommodation. Employers are struggling to find housing for their workers. We must protect homes for people who want to live and work in our communities while also recognising that tourism accommodation supports local jobs, family businesses and people's right to earn an income from their property. Short-term letting is not the sole cause of our housing difficulties. This balanced approach is essential. I welcome this Bill's introduction of a national registration system for short-term lettings up to 21 consecutive nights. When I book a taxi and it is on its way, I can see the registration details of that taxi. When I get in, I can see the identification card of the driver. That gives me transparency, accountability and a system by which I can identify the operator. Even when I go to the country markets and buy a cake, I know food safety standards have been complied with. In the same vein, it is reasonable to expect similar transparency in the short-term accommodation sector. I also welcome that this new system will give us reliable data to work with. It will help local authorities and policymakers to better understand the scale, location and nature of short-term letting, which will then help us to make informed decisions around housing, tourism and regional development. We can all agree that the sector has transformed across the last decade. Our regulatory framework needs to reflect that. I welcome what is perhaps the most important thing, which is that we are moving closer to certainty for accommodation providers. Many constituents have contacted me since I was elected looking for certainty. I particularly think of a retired woman who lets out her chalet to supplement her pension. She was unsure about planning requirements, about the rules and about the future of her very small business. These are real people who need clear answers and certainty. When this legislation is enacted, we have to be really proactive about the requirements using straightforward language and not just in the online space. I welcome that Fáilte Ireland has been appointed as the body to oversee the registration system. I also welcome the confirmation we have been given that the registration fee will be €25. However, perhaps we could look at the application process. Right now, the Bill says it will be online only. I think of people like those women who are in their retirement and who may not be as tech savvy. There must be simple ways for them to do it. I also support proportionate inspections and enforcement by Fáilte Ireland alongside consistent obligations for hosts and online platforms. When accommodation is operated commercially, appropriate standards and accountability matter, especially for the tourists who are coming into the country. I know that registration and planning permission are two separate matters. The two have been a little bit conflated over recent months. I welcome the proposed transitional arrangements under section 47. These will allow for a 24-month period for people to comply with national planning requirements. I also welcome the measures that will make it easier for established operators of seven years or more to have that proposed presumption in favour of planning permission. I also welcome the introduction of the simplified retention application process. That is a vital step. However, I ask the Minister of State to look at whether the local authority planning departments will receive additional resources to deal with the volume of applications that might arise. We cannot promise providers more certainty and then leave them waiting months for decisions. I welcome this Bill. It offers an opportunity for greater transparency, fairer regulation and clarity. I know that Mayo needs thriving tourism and thriving communities as well as housing.

There are many people who are running legitimate short-term lets but the Government's delays and chaotic approach to tackling this legislation have left them in limbo for years upon years. If this had been done years ago, there would have been certainty by now. People would have known the position they are in. Many of these homes could have had families in them by now. I just checked today and there are 404 entire homes in Cork city on Airbnb for January. I am not talking about west Cork, east Cork and north Cork but about Cork city alone. I also checked Daft today and there are only 158 homes to rent in Cork today. The problem is clear. Those statistics speak for themselves. There are countless families in Cork who are looking for somewhere to rent. These families are being driven out of their homes by the rental legislation the Government brought in earlier this year. People have been given notice to quit but have nowhere to go. The Government has driven people out of their homes and they now have nowhere to go. Does the Minister of State know what the crazy thing about this situation is? There are families in emergency accommodation, hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation. Children are growing up in such accommodation. At the same time, there are tourists coming to Ireland, including to Cork city, and staying in the homes these families should be in. The system is upside down. The tourists are staying in the homes and the homeless are staying in the bed and breakfast accommodation and hotels. How can that be right? That is a fact on the ground at the moment. I was contacted by a woman today. She has been in homeless accommodation for over a year. She is a very young woman. She is seemingly trying to get her life back together. She has no family support. She does everything for herself. She is not looking for anything special or anything extra. All she wants is to be able to rent a safe home and to have a key for her own front door and to be able to lock it. She wants to build a home for herself. Is that too much to ask? People are now living with their parents in their 20s, their 30s and even their 40s. How can it be right for adults to be living at home with their parents because they cannot find anywhere to rent? If they did find anywhere to rent, the rents are so high that they are blocked from going in. These houses should be made available to those people and the thousands of others across the State who are looking to rent or who are in emergency accommodation in bed and breakfast accommodation and hotels. We have short-term lets in places like Blarney Street, North Main Street and Dennehy's Cross. The Government has failed to tackle them. That is where families should be living. Instead, the Minister of State and her Government have tied themselves up in knots. It is not because they are worried about the small business owners or rural Ireland. It is because they are worried about the big corporate companies and agencies that are always at the heart of their decision making. They are tying up properties in Cork and in many other towns and cities. As always, the Government has done everything possible to protect those who are only in it for profit and for greed. When will this Government bring in legislation that puts people at its heart?

For too long, the State simply has not known with any degree of certainty how many homes are being used for short-term letting, where they are located or what impacts they are having on local housing markets. That is not a sustainable basis for policymaking in the middle of a housing crisis. We have to be honest about what this means. Housing is not just another commodity. In a housing crisis, every full house advertised as an Airbnb let is a potential family home lost. When teachers cannot find accommodation near the schools where they work, when healthcare workers cannot find rental properties and when young families are forced to leave areas where they have roots because housing is unavailable, we have a social and economic problem that requires intervention. Housing must, first and foremost, serve the needs of communities. That does not mean demonising every short-term letting host, because many are letting space within their own homes, which are already occupied. However, it does mean recognising that in a housing emergency, those who make public policy have a responsibility to ensure that homes are used in a way that supports sustainable communities as well as tourism. It has become clear in many counties that things have gone too far in one direction and that the Government has been too slow to address the imbalance in that regard. If a property is being offered for short-term letting, the State should know that it exists, local authorities should know where it is located, planning authorities should be able to determine whether it is operating within the law and policymakers should be able to understand the impact that short-term letting is having on housing supply, tourism accommodation and the local community. A clear lesson from the past decade of housing policy is that planning rules without enforcement are not enough. Ireland already has planning requirements relating to short-term letting. The difficulty has been that local authorities have had no effective way of identifying which properties are operating, where they are located or whether they have the required planning permission. The result has been a system that has really struggled to command any degree of confidence. There is a question to be asked and answered in this Bill, which is whether the register will have an impact if the Government does not create an enforcement framework around it. From our experience to date with the vacant sites register, it is fair to say right now that this is unlikely. A register that is not backed up by proper inspection, verification and enforcement risks becoming little more than a catalogue of errors. The success of this legislation will depend not simply on the collection of information but on the willingness and capacity of the State to act on that information. Fáilte Ireland must have the resources to monitor compliance, local authorities must have the resources to investigate breaches and platforms must be required to remove listings that do not comply with this law. There is one aspect of this Bill that I have a particular issue with. As we know, the legislation provides for different treatment depending on whether a property is located inside or outside larger urban areas, with a transitional approach applying outside the 25 built-up areas with populations of more than 20,000. This Kilgarvan carve out - I have no idea why it is being called that - suggests that in certain parts of the country some people are more deserving of housing than others. The evidence suggests that some of the most acute impacts of short-term lettings are not only found in our largest towns and cities but also in rural communities, coastal areas and in parts of the Gaeltacht where housing supply is already under enormous strain. By raising the population threshold to 20,000, the Government is showing a serious lack of backbone. This leaves only 24 towns on the island able to avail of new short-term letting laws and it leaves most of the towns in Ireland completely at the mercy of Airbnb or other short-term let companies. This points to a deeper trend on the part of this Government of leaving rural communities to fend for themselves. The housing crisis is just as devastating in rural Ireland as it is in built-up areas but what the Government is saying is that some places deserve housing more than others. Counties with majority small towns and villages are suffering exponentially due to short-term rentals taking over the market. Figures have shown that there were 1,009 short-term rentals in Kerry but only 22 homes advertised to rent. The situation is equally dire in other counties. In Clare, there were 532 short-term lets available but only 19 long-term rentals, while in Donegal there were 24 short-term lets for every single long-term rental. It is also imperative to protect our Gaeltacht areas, which are already disproportionately affected by the explosion in the number of short-term lettings. Between May 2019 and September of this year, the total number of Airbnbs in Gaeltacht areas increased by 88%, which is a completely soul-destroying number for those looking for long-term lets in their local communities. There is a distinct need for this legislation, as drafted, to be amended to protect Gaeltacht areas specifically because short-term lets act directly against regions focused on the sustainable renewal and regeneration of the Irish language. This Bill will ultimately be measured by one clear metric. Does it help to make more homes available for people who need them? We do not need more empty administration, yet another register or another report. We need homes for families, for workers and for people who want to stay in the communities they grew up in. If we are serious about tackling the housing crisis we must be equally serious about enforcement where serious problems exist. Ultimately, homes should be for living in, communities should be places where people can build their lives and public policy should put those principles first.

It is unbelievable that we are discussing short-term lets in the midst of a housing crisis that has been going on for about 13 years, if not longer. Some of the figures are stark. While short-term lets are not the cause of the housing crisis, they are certainly contributing to the problems caused by this Government and that which preceded it not building enough affordable and social homes for the past number of years. It is estimated by one consultancy that there are 28,342 short-term lets available but that there are only 12 houses available through HAP, which says it all. There are ten times as many short-term lets as full-time rentals, and 75% of these homes are often empty. They are sitting idle during a housing crisis. Having listened to some TDs talking here, I am obliged to wonder about their priorities. How much tourism do we actually need? We need homes for everybody, including essential workers, teachers, nurses and all of the people who we cannot get to remain in the country. We are being so flaithiúlach in our legislation governing short-term lets. The majority of them are in high-demand housing areas. In Dublin, for example, there are around 2,000 short-term lets but only 1,200 long-term rentals available at the moment. I want to make a very quick point about rural areas, because I have heard some TDs talking about that. There is a homelessness and housing crisis in rural areas. I know so many people who are affected by it. In the Gaeltacht specifically, we have been asked by Conradh na Gaeilge to take into account that there are 100 times more short-term lets than full-time rentals available and not to allow this grace period to apply in Gaeltacht areas in order to protect the Irish language, apart from anything else. I want to talk about my constituency of Dublin West, which has always been a housing and homelessness blackspot. It is a very young constituency with a great many migrant workers. There are several hundred short-term lets available in Dublin West but practically no HAP accommodation. There are 97 short-term lets available in Dublin 15. I could not get the figures for Ashtown, but there are nearly 300 in Cabra and Glasnevin, some of which would be in Ashtown. That is nearly 100 houses that could be available to rent but are not. I spent last Saturday with a homeless couple - I am sure lots of TDs could say the same - trying to help them navigate the humiliating system that we have in this country. People present as homeless and often get a terrible reception. They are sent off to get loads of forms together. They might have to couch surf or sleep in their car while they are waiting. They go through these hoops to get onto homeless HAP but then there is no HAP accommodation available. It is nearly embarrassing explaining this system to people. What is the point in trying to jump through hoops to get HAP when there is no HAP accommodation available? One of the reasons for this is that people see the profits that can be made from short-term letting. I do not have time to go into the detail of the Bill now. It should worry people that the only thing that we can do to help anyone who is homeless now is HAP and there is just none available. Meanwhile, we have TDs standing up in the Dáil talking about how important it is to allow people to profit off tourism. I want to talk about the response to the housing crisis in my last couple of minutes. One of the huge announcements that has been made is the Dunsink urban area plan. Everybody heard about it over the course of the summer. I am completely behind the idea of developing this land for affordable and social housing. Some 90% of it is in the ownership of Fingal council, and the rest is in private ownership. However, it has to be done properly, and the omens are not very good in the way this is being dealt with. To plan a new town, there should be consultation and discussions in the areas that are going to be impacted. There should be time to hear submissions and to allow feedback from councillors. I was writing a submission the day I was going on my summer holiday, that was how short a timeframe there was. There has to be, particularly in sensitive greenbelt or rural areas, protection of rural lanes and villages like Dunsinea Lane, Scribblestown Lane and the Tolka Valley. Also, the key thing is that we do not want a policy of "pack 'em in" either. The density rose in this case from 7,000 up to 18,500. Seven thousand was indicated in a motion that I put in the council two years ago when I was on it-----

It is very relevant to short-term lets - and then suddenly the density increased. It is about our response to the housing crisis, short-term lets and the problems they are causing for finding accommodation in the country. I really feel that this plan should be mentioned in that context. The only way to respond to the housing crisis is through the local authorities, and a State-sponsored agency should be set up to deal with this emergency, including taking information about the short-term lets in an area and whether there should be a complete ban on them in certain areas where there is such a housing and homeless crisis. In the case of plans like Dunsink, it has to be balanced. We all know there has to be transport, schools, infrastructure and things that communities need to thrive. It is all linked in. We have a housing crisis, and the Government is responding with a very light-touch regulation Bill in terms of these Airbnbs and short-term lets. This is coming from Europe. It is not even coming from the Government. It has been told that it needs to deal with this, and this is causing havoc throughout Europe. We see local people objecting in Barcelona and cities everywhere as gentrification takes over and shoots up the prices. We have seen the massive movement that is taking place in Spain in response to an 80-year-old woman being taken out of her long-term accommodation for a short-term let. That is why the problems are all interlinked.

The problems are interlinked. I agree with that and the points Deputy Coppinger raised are relevant because the connecting point between the short-term let scandal and the wider housing crisis is whether housing is built for people or profit. That is the connection. It is simple. Housing for people who need a roof over their heads should take priority over housing built to make a profit, whether it is short-term lets or another profiteering approach to property. I was frankly shocked in the housing committee yesterday. I knew about the RTÉ site, but we got the details when we met Cairn Homes. I just thought that it is incredible that the RTÉ site, a publicly owned site, has been sold to one of the most profitable housing developers which profits from building housing on a public site and all we are getting back on what used to be a 100% public site is 10% social housing, and I was quite shocked to find out that there would be no affordable housing. I do not even know how it managed that. Somebody should look into that. I presume there has been loophole it has managed to use to get around the 10% affordable requirement, but that should be 100% social and affordable housing. Ultimately, the solution to the housing crisis is to build social and affordable housing, to do it at scale and to direct the resources of the State and the available construction labour, which is finite, to building houses for people not for profit. It is in that context that we should address the short-term letting situation. It is good that the Government is addressing this, but to be honest, it is mostly to the credit of protestors in Barcelona and across Europe protesting against Airbnb, short-term lets and the impact they are having on the housing market and how that then influenced the European Union in order to issue directives and so on that have finally worked their way through to the Irish Government having to legislate to deal with the problem. Apart from the wider preference for profit instead of people in terms of short-term letting, the problem is summed up to me by the fact that if you go on daft.ie today there are 1,300 properties to rent for people who need a roof over their head, but according to Indecon, 32% of the 28,000 short-term lets that it found in Ireland are in Dublin. That is 9,000 in Dublin. There are 1,300 for people who are in emergency accommodation or trying to find HAP accommodation or for ordinary working people going out to try to find rental accommodation they can afford, and most of them are probably too expensive and will not take HAP, or are too expensive for HAP, but there are 9,000 short-term lets. Imagine if the 9,000 short-term lets were available for rent at affordable prices. Imagine the impact that would have on the housing crisis in Dublin. It would be massive. It would not solve it all, but it would make a big difference. It would probably account for most of the people in emergency accommodation at the moment. Just think about that. There are kids who this Christmas will be going through their second Christmas in emergency accommodation. It is disgusting and unacceptable, but the Government is still balancing that against the right of somebody to make profit. Let us be clear about it: it is not as if they would not make a fair bit of money from just renting it out in the normal rental market. They would make a lot. Look at average rents, they are outrageous, but no, that is not good enough for them. They want to rent them at three and four times the profit. We then give exceptions in rural areas because of pressure from certain people, which is affecting the housing crisis in rural areas because people want to make more profit. I repeat that point. If people who are currently doing short-term letting were told that they could not do it in rural areas or anywhere else, they could still profit from renting it out to people who need housing in their areas, but that is not good enough for them. They want to make more profit. They say, "What about tourism?" How many people come here each year? It is 6.5 million; more than the entire population of the country. It puts the so-called scapegoating or blaming of asylum seekers for our problems into perspective. There were 13,000 asylum applications last year; a tiny number. There are 6.5 million tourists every year. Do not get me wrong, I am not against tourism, but do we need to expand it more? Should it be a priority over people who need a roof over their head and for their families? Should we be building hotels and making profit rather than building affordable housing for people affected by the housing crisis, including the working people in this country who cannot afford anywhere to live and the young people qualifying in the health professions who are going to be out on strike next week because they are thinking of leaving the country because they do not think they will be able to afford to live here? I know what I think is the priority and what should be the priority. It should be their right to have an affordable roof over their heads and for it not to be a struggle to buy or rent a property, not just for their sakes so that they do not end up in homeless accommodation or in a stressed state trying to pay unaffordable rents, but also for the sake of the country, because if they leave, as many of them are, it is going to impact, and is impacting, on all of us. In fact, it is one of the big reasons there are going to be strikes next week. It is not just about pay. It is about the affordability of accommodation and the availability of housing for working people in this country. It needs to be enforced. It needs to happen. There should be no exemptions. I do not know why over the shop stuff is, for example, being exempted, but there has to be serious enforcement of this stuff and there should be no exemptions in rural areas or anywhere else.

I commend the Minister and his team on bringing this legislation forward. Short-term lets are a very important part of tourism accommodation in our coastal and rural communities. Many are operated by families using cottages, farm buildings or pods in the curtilage of their family farms or homes. They support tourism jobs, family businesses, restaurants, cafés and activity providers which all depend on visitors coming to stay in these areas and experiencing all they have to offer. However, in many coastal towns and villages in my constituency, I am aware of former council houses and family homes that are no longer part of the residential market unfortunately. We simply cannot ignore the impact of an unregulated short-term letting sector on the sustainability of these communities. It is not good enough. Ironically, it also has a knock-on impact on the ability of tourism businesses to operate due to the lack of accommodation for their staff. A house cannot be two things at once. It cannot be a profitable short-term rental and at the same time an affordable home for a young local family to stay in the community where they grew up. In many coastal communities, the high financial returns available from short-term letting have put house prices beyond the mortgage that local wages can support unfortunately. We are not simply debating tourism accommodation. We are debating whether local people can still afford to buy a home in the community where they were born and raised. That is unbalanced, not sustainable and it is why regulation is necessary. However, I accept there is a big difference between a second home being bought and operated as commercial tourism accommodation and a farming family letting a cottage on their farm or a family earning some additional income from a granny flat or a pod in their garden. These do not remove homes from the housing stock and are very unlikely to be put up for sale or rent, but they help families make ends meet and they contribute positively to local tourism. I believe there is a strong case for sensible carve-outs in those circumstances but we must hold a firm line on a couple of situations. Former council houses should not be eligible for change of use. Equally, where planning permission was granted on the basis of permanent occupation, those conditions should be respected. They exist to protect local communities and local housing supply, and should not be undermined. The Bill is ultimately about getting the balance right, supporting tourism, supporting rural enterprise and supporting local communities while ensuring that local people can afford to live in the place they call home which is very important for those people. With sensible refinements, I believe this legislation can achieve that balance.

Chualamar ó fhoireann de chuid Choláiste na Tríonóide ag cruinniú chomhchoiste inné, agus ag an gcruinniú poiblí i mBaile an Fheirtéaraigh coicís ó shín, go bhfuil fadhb mhór sa Ghaeltacht mar gheall ar na Airbnbs. At that meeting we heard that there were níos mó ná 1,000, more than 1,000, Airbnb offerings in the Corca Dhuibhne west Kerry area. There are about 5,000 houses there. At the same time, people who have returned to the area having lived abroad for a number of years or are moving into the area to take up employment mostly in the tourism sector cannot find a place to rent. I have spoken to some of the tourism providers and I know that they are obliged to provide accommodation for their own staff in their accommodation but also in purchased houses in the area so that their staff have a place to go and they are offered to them at a more reasonable rent. The mean price for a house in the area is the €400,000 in a relatively out of the way place even though there is a massive tourism demand. There is no doubt that the percentage of accommodation offered on Airbnb in the area is disproportionate and not sustainable into the future. The report stated that there was a paucity of engagement with the realities on the ground and there is no doubt about that. I am not saying this is an easy fix; it is quite a complicated area. Even within my constituency, nobody has any objection to somebody putting their grandmother's house, their relative's house or rooms in their own place on Airbnb. That is not a difficulty. However, in certain parts of the county, including Killarney and Dingle, we do not want to have ten houses in a cul-de-sac with eight of them offered on Airbnb. That is not good for the people who had a legitimate expectation that they would have neighbours as opposed to people coming in for weekends and leaving the area again with the houses possibly not being maintained or being part of the community. There is consensus in the west Kerry area. We have Government policy, which is largely unregulated today. We would not have any problem if we had local people renting out, but that is not the case. Sykes Holiday Cottages have 25,000 cottages worldwide. They are right in the veins of the community and of the housing situation in the Kerry area. There is no doubt that a more sustainable policy is needed. We need a sustainable community for the population in Corca Dhuibhne because there is also the language vulnerability there. We heard at the meeting that since 2011 regular and daily use of the Irish language in that area has decreased from something in the 30s to 28%. There is a risk that by 2050 the language could die unless some action is taken or there is some State intervention. As one business owner in west Kerry told me, the cultural piece has to be taken into account mar tá an teanga ag fulaingt. As I said, nobody is objecting to certain rural sustainable tourism at all but the Government is making a mess of the situation. The 20,000 rule is completely arbitrary and is not based on any objective criteria. It should be scrapped for the sake of local housing needs and local homeless services. As one of the other contributors said, former council houses should not be used for short-term letting. I agree with the amendment that has been proposed about the two-year rule. The grandfather clause also has to be reviewed. The Government needs to examine this again in order to provide better and more sustainable communities and avoid plummeting numbers in GAA clubs because of the proliferation of properties offered on Airbnb.

The Minister has made an absolute shambles of this Bill from start to bloody finish. With no disrespect to the Minister of State, Deputy Smyth, the senior Minister, Deputy Burke, should be here for the full reading of the Bill. He has made such a hames of it along the way and he has been kicked around so much by the Minister for housing that the Bill before us now will do untold damage to tourism in the country. It is his job to protect tourism. We know he wants to tax hotel beds, which is another attack on tourism; do not ask me why. It is not good enough for him to walk out of here tonight after a little more than an hour of the debate after we begged and pleaded him to bring this Bill, which has had so many false attempts. It is like a horse in the Grand National falling at the fence. He has fallen at the fence several times and this time he has really fallen and let the people of Ireland down, mainly people in rural areas and mainly women who provide this fantastic service. One woman sent me a message today. She said: I thought Peter Burke had said there would be a caveat put in if the Airbnb was located in our principal private residence instead of us being bundled in together. We are not taking from the housing market. We will never long-term let. They are effectively closing us down over a two-year period with their commercial planning requirements and many of us only doing business six months. It is simply not viable to open for the winter period with shared MPRNs and energy, kerosene and electricity costs. I could go on. There are messages after messages because I have been very strong on this and I will tell the Minister why. I seldom talk about my parents here. My mother did Airbnb in the 1970s and I saw what I did. It reared us. A woman working at home on a farm did Airbnb on the side and that is exactly the same model used by many of the people with whom I held public meetings in west Cork over the past year and a half. They have brought that up with me. It was a little side income to educate the children. I am very disappointed in the people from Dublin who have spoken here. They are living in a bubble. They do not understand how rural Ireland works. I am lucky. I live in rural Ireland. I live in a beautiful place west of Schull on the way to Goleen surrounded by people in Durrus and Ballydehob and so many more all the way out east to Courtmacsherry. I could go on - Kilbrittain, Timoleague and all those areas that are trying to do a little bit of business. That is all they ask for here but this is the very thing the Government is trying to do regarding bringing in planning regulations to those rural people. I listened to different TDs here today. Regarding the Social Democrats - good God almighty - its leader is from west Cork, which besides Kerry is the capital of tourism of this country, but she and her party have done nothing but wipe out tourism. I listened to Deputy Gibney, who said we have to mind the people who are working in cafés because they need places to stay. Just a few months ago, her party did everything in its power to block the VAT rate cut, of which I did approve, to save cafés and restaurants. The Social Democrats tried to do them out so it was trying to get rid of the workers in the first place. That will tell us what a dream bubble it is living in. Deputy Hearne spoke about a constituent in Santry. Yes, it was a terrible story involving a person aged 80 who had no home. That is a shocking story and I fully understand that but does he think that the people of Durrus must provide that person with a house? That is not going to work. This Bill is unworkable. Government TDs are coming in tonight trying to put out a very nice speech that might go up in social media this evening. Deputy Kyne was elected. Is he going back to Connemara because I will call a vote against this Bill tonight? Is he going to go back to the constituents of his I met when I was canvassing there who told me this cannot go ahead and that it will lead to the ruination of a small business that actually has people going down for a little bit of food calling to the restaurant, café or pub? This is all about tourism. Is he going to go back to them and say "I'm going to vote against you tonight" because that is exactly what he will do? They will speak out of one side of their mouth and come in here and do the other thing and that is not good enough. I listened to Deputy Coppinger, although I suppose I should not have listened because I never heard such silliness in all my life. She asked how much tourism is needed in the country. In the name of God almighty, what is wrong with a person who could say that in a country where tourism is the largest indigenous industry and biggest regional employer? It is easy to know that they want everybody on the dole and everybody to get a free house but that is not how the real world works. The people I represent are the workers, in particular women, who wanted that little side income but were proud to offer a fantastic service - a dream service - that the Government is now going to ruin. Regarding Sinn Féin, Deputy Conway-Walsh spoke very much from the heart, as do I, and I would agree with her but Deputy Ó Broin then came along and spiked that by saying he does not want the two-year compliance rule. We do not want it at all but he wants to bring in the rules tomorrow morning. That will lead to the ruination of short-term lets in rural Ireland and that is the point.

I have to correct the Deputy.

I am talking now. The Deputy will get her time to talk. There is more people who spoke here tonight. The only one who spoke here today-----

The Deputy is taking advantage of-----

The only one that spoke here today who understood exactly what this is going to do is Deputy Lawlor. He said we should concentrate on areas with the largest incidence of homelessness. That is where this Bill should have been pointed at and not at the small rural communities that deliver for people and continue to deliver a little bit of tourism and financial aid at a difficult time. It might be a little side building on a farm or whatever. That is what needs to be done on this Bill and changes need to be made. The Minister said that he proposes to engage constructively. Independent Ireland have 11 amendments tabled for Committee Stage next week. Is he going to accept any of those or will he reject them all one by one? Is that working constructively with the people out there? I am not putting them down for myself because I do not do Airbnb. I am putting them down on behalf of my constituents and on behalf of the people who have delivered the fantastic service down through the years. I think the Government misread the whole situation. It is understandable that guidelines could be needed for cities and bigger towns but not the small rural communities. Deputy O'Connor is the Cathaoirleach of the committee that will be dealing with this next week and I sincerely hope he will. He said there are different lanes and he is right. There are different lanes in relation to this. Take the example of the Beara Peninsula where I live. There is no hotel there. Now the Government is going to do away with the chance that people had to stay in a community like that if it is going to continue with the role it is playing. Deputy Devlin spoke about how Fáilte Ireland will have enforcement powers. He is happy with the two-year period. He spoke about Dún Laoghaire. I am certainly not happy because I speak on behalf of the rural people of west Cork. Deputy Dolan said that what is needed in urban Ireland will not work in rural Ireland. Tonight, he will get a chance to vote to make sure that he does support us and I hope he does not change his mind. The whole point I am making here is that this is poorly thought through. It is an absolute shambles from start to finish. The Minister was caught left, right and centre on numerous occasions. It looks to me like Deputy O'Connor has no understanding of rural tourism in Ireland and tonight, he is going to bury it and the recovery after this is going to cost millions.

To say I am disappointed in this Bill is an understatement from a person who has grown up in rural Ireland and who appreciates what urban and rural can actually do together. The law the Government is trying to bring in here will actually desecrate rural Ireland again. The last Bill the Government tried to put through regarding energy costs reduced the carbon tax on kerosene and gas but it only reduced it on gas piped to buildings. In other words, most of rural Ireland will not qualify for that. The Government forgot to mention gas provided by the likes of Flogas and Calor Gas that is in drums so it excluded this gas, which is used in rural areas. That is what it has excluded. The Government has done the same thing with Airbnbs. Go around Limerick city and county and try to get a hotel to stay at. We have the Ryder Cup coming to the area. What is going happen there? What will happen to the millions upon millions of euro that this is going to provide to people in Limerick, Kerry, Clare and Tipperary and all the surrounding areas? What is it going to generate for the people around here? People who come here for a short stay use Airbnbs. Number one, they might not be able to afford a hotel. They might be coming on a budget holiday so they go to the Airbnbs where they can travel around different places. They support all the communities - all the shops and publicans. How many people are going to pull out of it now? Then we look at the planning conditions for people who have had Airbnbs for over seven years. The Government says they can look for retention. This means that they come under the current building regulations, which means it costs thousands. Where once a person could get planning permission and an engineer to do a planning application for him or her for €3,000, the cost for a house is now €7,000 or €8,000 so it is going to be a cost on something that is already broken. We cannot get engineers to do applications. What is going to happen now? Costs are going to go up. What happened when everybody came from Ukraine and we were trying to house them? Every hotel in Ireland was full. The Government took more hotels out of the market, which left fewer hotels. What happened? Prices rose. We are fighting to try to get that business back after we were able to get them into different towns, villages and cities. At one stroke of a pen, it affected the one thing that was supporting places in rural Ireland - getting people up into the Galtee Mountains and other places along with the greenways we were talking about. People want to travel around Ireland. What supports that? Airbnbs. What has the Government done? "Yerra, that does not matter. We will destroy them." One ruling does all. That is what has been wrong with this Government from the very start. This is what it has done. It has destroyed this country and now it is destroying rural Ireland.

I do not think a speaker from Aontú is coming, but if one does, he can have my slot. I welcome the opportunity to speak on Second Stage of this Bill. I have been involved in it on Committee Stage for the past year and a half, watched all the discussions on it take place and listened to the presentations from various property owners, especially those from rural Ireland and families who had rented out a house next to a new house they had built or who had a couple of properties that will never be rented out commercially. There is a little bit of a dichotomy in this debate. On the one hand, this is being used to tackle the real availability of houses that could be brought out in urban areas. For example, I think it was Inside Airbnb that tracked that, of the 6,637 listings in Dublin, 61% were considered to be entire homes and apartments, which is about 4,050 full properties removed from the housing market. Now, you have to add a caveat there because, obviously, if the property is your principal primary residence, you can still rent out an entire home for a period, and some of them might be rented out in that way. Basically, though, as regards the multi-listing hosts in Dublin, over 50% of Dublin's short-term rental supply was controlled by hosts who managed multiple properties. Therefore, in areas like Dublin, and probably Cork and Galway, although I do not know as much about them, there are properties that could be brought straight away into the rental market to help with our housing crisis, and we have a massive housing crisis, as we know. As I said during committee debates, however, this tries to crack a walnut with a sledgehammer. While it tries to free up properties in the traditional rent pressure zones, it also puts undue pressure on the people whose livelihoods and partial incomes have been created over generations in many cases by this. Now, there are a couple of outlier towns like Killarney, a big tourist town that is over the population threshold, that need some form of support to allow for people who have had properties for some time, and we hope that there are some loopholes in that regard, but as regards the overall legislation, I will table a number of amendments. I have actually submitted some already. The overall onus on the smaller operator is way too high. The European legislation basically said we needed to register short-term lets; it did not put any other serious obligation on us. Fáilte Ireland could have just set up a system whereby someone could say that they had a property and it was rented out as a short-term let for up to 14 or 21 days, or no more than 90 or 120 days in a year, it ticked the box and it met certain health and safety standards. Instead, however, we first changed the planning laws, which, on paper at least, require operators to double-check with the local authority and put a lot of pressure on the local authorities to say that the properties met planning regulations. I will give the example of a multigenerational holiday home, whereby there are relatives who own a holiday home. They may have had connections with the area originally, so they buy the holiday home in the area and it is used over a considerable number of nights throughout a year, but there are periods when it is not used because all of these families have relatives, work, careers, etc. The house is left idle for possibly six weeks to two months in the winter at different times. If that house is not occupied and heated, it will fall into a state of disrepair, so many families who have a holiday home would rent out the home for a week or three nights or two nights over a weekend. It might cover the cost of the house insurance, which is a bonus, but it will cover the cost of keeping the house going in order that when the family are able to go back in on bank holiday weekends, Easter, October or the new year, the house is in good nick. Those people are not professional landlords. They do not want to be professional landlords. They will never operate a property on that basis. Similarly, and I have met so many of them during the discussions, there are family members who built a new house on their family land and the old house is still there. They did up the old house a little and they have relatives coming over at Christmas or they may have a few coming over at summer. They will never rent out that property to a tenant and get into a legal agreement with a tenant, so what do they do? They rent out the property because they are living close by. They make a few quid out of it. They are fully tax compliant, they record all the income and they meet all the requirements. In recent years, going back to 2018, they have been required to make sure that, without having changed anything of the property, it has to have a change of use, That is onerous in itself, but the registration fees that have been proposed also add too much to the pressure on people in rural communities. Some of them are involved in farming, some have part-time jobs, some have full-time jobs and commutes. They have this as an extra income stream and it is making use of a property, bringing tourists into the area and generating some form of income for people in an area, and they are being penalised. We can talk about whether or not we have a derogation for two years to allow people to get everything in order. My personal view is that this is about the small people, not the commercial landlords who are basically cheating the system by renting out urban properties as Airbnbs and who own five or six of them. This was not the case before the regulations were ever looked at. I am talking about going back to the nineties or the eighties. There were families who operated properties like that way back, and there should be some form of derogation for them, but not for people who started doing this in recent years in the likes of Dublin, for example, because they saw it as a way to make a massive killing without having any of the legal obligations of being a landlord or being registered with the Residential Tenancies Board. I 100% agree that we need to bring those properties back onto the market, but we also have to realise, for rural Ireland in particular, that there are properties that will never be brought onto the market. If anything, those properties will still be used but they will cost the families more to operate them. They will not be used as often or, if the families do end up having to fork out, it will come at a financial burden to them at a time when we are so uncertain in terms of tourist numbers coming into Ireland. We need to amend the legislation as proposed, not to harm the little people, in order that we can use the legislation to deal with those who are cheating the system.

I compliment Deputy Gogarty on his contribution. It covered a lot of points I fully agree with, although I will cover some different points. His phrase that this is very much a sledgehammer to crack a nut was in my head as well. It is a one-size-fits-all approach and it does not work. Short-term lets provide the only form of tourist accommodation in many parts of rural Ireland. They bring tourists from all over the world to places that would otherwise never receive tourists. I know because I live in a village in rural west Wicklow and I have witnessed what these short-term lets bring. These industries were here before the housing shortage and they will be here long after the housing shortage is gone. They supply accommodation where hotels will never be built. They offer a unique and authentic experience to the tourist and show Ireland at its best. We cannot destroy an industry on the basis that doing so may increase the housing supply by some small amount. I know a poll was carried out across a number of host groups across the country and determined that, on average, 93.5% of hosts cannot or will not release their properties for long-term letting. The legislation will, therefore, have little or no impact. According to Fáilte Ireland's data, self-catering accommodation is the second-largest provider of tourism beds in Ireland. Hotels provide 161,000 beds, while holiday lets provide 139,000 beds. This is at a time when hotel rates in many areas of Ireland are exorbitant. Hosts have no issue with a register. The whole area of planning permission, however, must be streamlined and explained. When will hosts need to demonstrate that they have planning permission? That question needs to be answered. These people provide a wonderful service. We must not bog them down with red tape and detailed planning applications. Additionally, the window for registration is only one month, namely, December. Can we come up with a list of questions and answers so that hosts know what is required? They are very much in the dark. Can the Department meet the Irish Self-Catering Federation, ISCF? The impact of releasing this rental accommodation into the long-term market will be negligible. The impact on tourism, people's incomes and rural Ireland is clear. This Government proudly supports rural Ireland, small businesses, tourism and Ireland's unique hospitality offering. Short-term lets are all these things rolled into one. I ask that the Government please support them.

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate on the Short-Term Letting and Tourism Bill 2026. I recognise the importance of having a proper regulatory framework for short-term letting in this country. We need accurate data, greater transparency and appropriate oversight of the sector. I also recognise the very real housing challenges facing communities throughout Ireland. However, I want to make one thing very clear. In addressing our housing difficulties, we must be careful not to create another problem for rural communities, such as those in Kerry, and small tourism operators and families that depend on this sector to make ends meet. This is particularly important in my county, where tourism is not simply an industry but the backbone of the local economy in many towns and villages. It supports thousands of jobs, sustains local businesses and provides an important source of income for families throughout the county. Short-term letting is an essential part of that tourism offering. Kerry has a very different tourism landscape from Dublin and some of the larger urban centres. We have rural villages, coastal communities, farms and isolated areas where traditional accommodation options are limited. For many families, providing a small amount of self-catering accommodation is not a major commercial operation. It might be a converted garage, a small annexe, a room or an additional unit on the family farm. For some, that accommodation generates €2,000 to €3,000 over the summer months. That might seem like a relatively insignificant amount to some people, but for an older person or rural household in Kerry, that money can pay for heating, car insurance, motor tax or essential repairs. I have received representations from constituents from Tarbert to Kenmare, Sneem to Tralee, Killarney to Dingle, Killorglin to Rathmore and Cahersiveen to Castleisland, and from north, south, east, west and mid-Kerry. People in every corner of our county are genuinely worried about these proposals and what they will mean for them. One constituent, for example, described the proposed arrangements as overly complicated and punitive. The constituent spoke about the additional pressure being placed on ordinary people who are already navigating NCT requirements, insurance, licences, planning applications and numerous other regulatory obligations. I do not believe we should dismiss these frustrations. We must ask whether we are creating a system proportionate to the scale and nature of the operation being regulated. A small family-run tourism unit in rural Kerry is not necessarily the same as a large commercial property portfolio operating in central Dublin. Our legislation and planning approach must recognise that distinction. I welcome the proposed national register to be administered by Fáilte Ireland. Having accurate information about the number, location and nature of short-term rental properties is sensible. Registration, however, must not become an unnecessarily complicated process. There must be clear guidance, accessible assistance and a straightforward route for ordinary householders to comply. I ask the Minister of State to clarify several matters. What exactly will be required of a small operator registering a converted garage, an independent annexe or a unit on a family farm? Will there be clear guidance distinguishing these properties from conventional residential houses being used exclusively for commercial short-term letting? What will the registration fee be? The legislation refers to a nominal fee to be prescribed by Fáilte Ireland. What will "nominal" mean in practice, particularly for somebody operating a small unit? What support will be available to people who do not have planning expertise or access to professional advisers? We cannot expect an elderly person or small rural operator to navigate a complicated planning process without meaningful assistance. I also want to address the national planning statement and the population threshold of 20,000. I acknowledge the Government's decision to adopt a more accommodating approach in towns and settlements with populations below 20,000, including a two-year period for operators to regularise their planning position. That is very welcome, but I question whether a population threshold alone is sufficient to determine the appropriate planning approach. We must look at the circumstances of individual communities, and consider whether there is a genuine shortage of long-term housing, whether a property could realistically serve as a long-term home and whether restricting its use would make any meaningful contribution to addressing the housing shortage. A converted outbuilding in rural Kerry, for example, located several kilometres from the nearest employment centre, is not necessarily a realistic alternative for a family seeking a long-term rental property. We need to be careful that we do not remove valuable tourism accommodation without creating a single additional home for somebody to live in.

On a point of order, I ask that the clock be stopped for one second. I have nothing but the utmost respect for the Minister of State, Deputy Smyth, but why, when we are debating something so important, do we not have the Minister for housing or a Minister of State from the Department here? I think this debate should be halted and we should have the Minister for housing or a Minister of State from that Department here. I say this with all due respect to the Minister of State. She knows this. It is not her fault.

It is crazy.

Representatives of associations around the country are watching this debate.

It looks like we are getting nothing sorted.

I do not mean to interrupt, and the Cathaoirleach Gníomhach knows this, but I think the position is entirely wrong.

Deputy Healy-Rae is correct. This is hugely important, and not just to Kerry but throughout the country.

I think the concerns are well made. Housing remains the single biggest challenge in this country. While lots of progress has been made, we all know that much more work remains to be done. Although 162,000 new homes have been delivered in the past five years and we are on course to see good completion figures this year, we have to do more. Increasing the delivery of new homes must remain the central focus of our housing policy. Equally, we need to ensure that vacant land and underutilised properties are returned to long-term use, which is why this legislation is necessary. Every property that can be returned to long-term residential use has the potential to help a person or family struggling to find accommodation. The measures in the Bill will help to ensure that. In areas like mine on the northside, with significant housing pressure across the board, the balance must be tilted towards residential and local housing need. Ultimately, boosting housing supply in all its forms is essential if we are to ease pressure on renters and support home ownership. I accept the concerns regarding tourism, and it is important that we recognise the valuable role tourism plays in communities throughout the country. The situation does vary across the country. I welcome the approval yesterday of the national planning statement on short-term letting, as mentioned by my colleague. It will provide a clearer framework for local authorities when determining planning applications for short-term letting. It is good that it will be clear for them. This clarity is vital for those already in the business and for the local authorities. One aspect of this Bill that deserves greater attention is the strengthening of Fáilte Ireland's short-term rental data. I have raised this issue previously. The quality of our tourism data can sometimes be poor, but it is very important that it is of a high quality. The enhanced data collection provided for in this legislation will improve oversight of that sector and help the Government and policymakers to make better informed decisions about tourism development and where investment goes in the year ahead. Enforcement of these new rules will be absolutely vital. I assume it will be local authorities that will be doing the enforcing because they will have the local know-how and the planning responsibility in terms of planning permissions. However, it is important that they are well resourced to do it and that they start enforcing straight away, so that those who are operating in the sector understand that this is happening and that they need to comply. In Dublin Bay North, as I mentioned, where housing demand far outweighs the demand for tourism, it is only right that housing needs are rebalanced in this way. This legislation will help with that balance and support Ireland's thriving tourism sector while also ensuring more homes are available for the people and the families who need them most.

Tá dlúthcheangal idir an gceist idir lámha againn anocht - rialachán na hearnála cíosa gearrthéarmach - agus todhchaí na Gaeilge mar theanga phobail. Tá géarchéim tithíochta againn sa Ghaeltacht. Ní féidir le muintir na Gaeltachta cur fúthu ina gceantair dhúchais féin de bharr an easpa soláthair dóthanach tithíochta inacmhainne le díol agus le fáil ar cíos. I staidéar a rinneadh i gColáiste na Tríonóide le déanaí, fuair siad amach nach bhfuil 40% de stoc tithíochta i nGaeltacht Chiarraí thiar á úsáid mar áit cónaithe fadtéarmach. Ní raibh fiú áit amháin le fáil ar cíos sa cheantar agus ós cionn 1,000 áit liostáilte ar Airbnb sa cheantar céanna. Tá tionchar tubaisteach ag an earnáil seo ar chumas an phobail a theanga a sheachadadh ó ghlúin go glúin. Tá an scéal mórán mar an gcéanna sna Gaeltachtaí eile thar timpeall na tíre. Mar sin tá sé riachtanach go ndéantar rialáil ar an earnáil ligin gearrthéarma agus go mbeadh cosaint agus stádas ar leith tugtha don Ghaeilge laistigh de sin. Fáiltím roimh an Bhille seo ach tá roinnt cosaintí breise gur mhaith liom a fheiceáil chun todhchaí na teanga a chinntiú. Mar gheall ar leochaileacht na Gaeltachtaí agus an luach cultúrtha ar leith a bhaineann leo, creidim gur cheart go mbeadh limistéir pleanála teanga Gaeltachta san áireamh d'athrú úsáide ar cead pleanála ón 1 Nollaig 2026. Is é sin le rá nach mbeidh an tréimhse bhreise dhá bhliain i gceist sa cheantar Gaeltachta don athrú úsáide mar a bheidh sna háiteanna faoi bhun daonra 20,000. Tabharfaidh an tréimhse dhá bhliain deis dóibh siúd atá ag ligean áiteanna go gearrthéarmach leanúint ar aghaidh mar is gnách. Téann sé i gcoinne cuspóirí na reachtaíochta agus ar an mbonn sin ní féidir glacadh leis.

Aontaím le go leor rudaí atá ráite sa díospóireacht seo. Bhí mé ag éisteacht san oifig agus mé ag scríobh an rud seo. While I have the Minister of State with responsibility for AI here, I want to raise something regarding the Bill but also regarding the housing market. I have put in parliamentary questions on this before. We need to do something in this Government regarding the advertising of AI-generated houses. It is something I have engaged with her Department on and I welcome the responses I am getting. It is not acceptable for absolute lies to be told regarding derelict and vacant properties, but that is what happens when an AI-generated image is the first thing people see when bidding on a house. That is something we need to tackle now as the market is growing. I will continue to engage and will follow up with the Minister of State's office on two absolutely outrageous cases that have been highlighted to me by Ciarán from the "Crazy House Prices" Instagram page. As my colleague has mentioned, we have a huge demand for housing in Dublin Bay North. It is not acceptable for short-term lettings to be pushing my generation, the generation before me and the generation to come out of renting and out of actual consistent accommodation. Another thing we are constantly discussing is very topical at the moment with the public sector strikes having gone on and coming again. We need to look at the rent relief tax scheme across the country as it is not acceptable for a garda, a nurse, a teacher or an SNA to get the same relief on their rent living in Dublin when they are paying nearly four times the price of rent while they are getting paid the exact same. That is also something at which we should be looking. As my colleague said, there is a difference between someone earning a little extra income and an entire residential property being permanently removed from the long-term housing market. Homes should come first. I welcome that the Bill introduces a national registration system through Fáilte Ireland. This will give us better information about properties being used in short-term letting and I welcome that. However, I also make the very important point that the success of this legislation will be measured not by how many properties we register but by how many homes are brought back into the long-term housing market for my constituents and for the constituents of everyone in this House. I reiterate my point on transparency in the property market as we are seeing property advertisers using AI-generated images. There is a big difference between showing someone what a house could look like after renovation and showing them an image that makes it look better than it actually is. I will follow up with the Minister of State's office on that. I ask for the Minister of State's support on the seller's legal pack legislation that I reintroduced to the House. I believe we can make the entire process of buying a lot faster, simpler and more transparent. At the moment there is too much documentation to be assembled. I am currently in the process of buying my own house and I see the amount of work that I have to go through. My older siblings have purchased their house too. We have to jump through hoops while other countries make it a lot simpler and streamline the process. The IPAV and other organisations have shown that we can streamline this process and make people sell, buy and get into houses quicker.

I support the principle behind this Bill. Greater transparency, accurate data and proper registration of short-term lettings are legitimate objectives. However, legislation should be judged not only by its intentions but also by its likely effects and impact. I am concerned this Bill may create difficulties for rural tourism economies without clear evidence that it will deliver the housing benefits it claims. The Government appears to recognise that rural Ireland faces different circumstances. The Bill amends the Planning and Development Act 2024 by inserting a new section 83A, which suspends for two years the requirement for planning permission for a material change of use to short-term letting in settlements with populations below 2,000. If the same policy cannot be applied equally across the State, it is reasonable to ask whether the full impact on rural communities has been properly assessed. Section 11 of the Bill inserts new sections 27A to 27D into the Tourist Traffic Act 1939. These provisions establish a mandatory registration regime; place responsibility on Fáilte Ireland as the competent authority; require hosts to provide specific information; provide for registration and renewal of fees; and create offences for non-compliance. Section 13 then provides that registrations will last for just 12 months before renewal is required. Taken individually, none of these measures appears excessive but the question is what happens when they operate together. For large commercial operators, registration, annual renewals and compliance obligations may simply become another business cost. The Irish Self-Catering Federation told the Oireachtas committee that the legislation in its current form is absolutely unworkable and it risks closing down elements of rural tourism. This concerns me greatly. The federation also warned that many properties which have provided visitor accommodation for years may leave the sector altogether. The Irish Tourism Industry Confederation has similarly warned that many rural areas do not have enough hotel capacity to replace the lost short-term letting accommodation. If bed capacity disappears, the wider tourism economy loses with it. This is particularly relevant in my own county of Offaly and across the midlands. Our tourism offering entirely depends on a dispersed network of farm stays, self-catering properties, guest houses and independent providers serving visitors to Birr, Lough Boora and the Shannon region, our greenways and our heritage attractions. What concerns me most of all is the absence of clear evidence. As far as I can see, the Government has not produced a county-by-county assessment showing how many tourism beds in the midlands may be affected. Indeed, the Irish Self-Catering Federation states that 90% of operators surveyed would not convert their properties to long-term rentals if tourism use ceased. If that is correct, the State could lose valuable accommodation capacity while gaining very little in additional housing. Before this House imposes a regime of annual registration, renewals, compliance obligations and enforcement powers, the Government should show that it understands the likely consequences for rural tourism and, indeed, the impact on counties like Offaly. Good legislation requires strong, robust evidence. I am not convinced that such evidence has been provided, because no assessment has been done.

This Bill had the potential to be sensible and practical. I was involved with it in the very early stages. What I can see is that the Bill has been that I would call "scutterised". It will create uncertainty for hardworking people who have spent years building businesses and bringing visitors to rural Ireland. We are talking about the woman who runs a self-catering cottage, the family who restored an old farmhouse and the people who clean, maintain and manage these properties. These are the people who make rural Ireland tick. They deserve better than this. I support the creation of a register, but the Government has turned a reasonable idea into a planning headache for established businesses to the extent that I have tabled 15 amendments to the Bill. I should not have to do that, but I am doing it in the interests of the people who are listening to this debate and who will be absolutely shocked by what they are hearing. Let us deal with the issue of the seven years. On 28 April the Taoiseach told this House: Planning law is planning law and the seven-year rule is there. Basically if someone is operating an Airbnb for seven years he or she does not need planning permission. Those are his words, not mine. He qualified this as being his understanding and spoke about enforcement, but people listening heard a clear and absolute assurance. Those long-standing operators who do not already have the necessary permission or exemption are now being told they must regularise their planning position. Why are we doing this? Where is the protection those people understood they were being promised? We were told that there is a simplified process. Call it simplified, streamlined or fast-tracked, it still involves a planning application. It is still a decision about whether someone can continue with their business or not. A seven-year rule does not guarantee approval. The Government’s guidance still refers to traffic hazards, flooding, pollution and occupancy conditions. Will established entrances now be questioned? Will area engineers be assessing sight-lines at properties that have been welcoming visitors for years? How will objections be dealt with and what will happen if permission is refused? People deserve straight answers before their livelihoods are subjected to this process. Let us take Kerry as an example. There may be around 4,000 short-term lets in Kerry at the moment. If a quarter of the owners of those properties need to apply for planning permission, that is 1,000 applications. How are our local authority and its excellent planners going to deal with that in the timeframe allowed, even though it is two years? If someone operating for less than seven years does not get the same presumption in their favour, a simpler form does not remove the uncertainty about the outcome. The registration timetable is another problem. Who in the name of God thought it was the right thing to do to tell us that this has to be done during the month of December, when possibly two weeks are gone? Why put people under that pressure? Give them three months practical assistance and a clear way for an authorised agent to help them. The appeals arrangements are also unbalanced. An operator has 21 days to appeal. That person can be asked for further information within 14 days, yet there is no overall statutory deadline for deciding that appeal. You cannot demand urgency from business owners and then leave them waiting indefinitely for an answer. Annual renewals must also be workable. Let people apply earlier and protect their registration while timely renewals are being processed. This Bill as it stands is an absolute disaster. I will say again it has been "scutterised". It is bringing uncertainty to these businesspeople. We will be tabling amendments in order to seek to protect established operators, give people reasonable time, provide for fair appeals and prevent administrative delays from putting businesses in jeopardy. We need homes, but we also need employment and visitors spending money in our towns and villages. Closing a holiday business does not automatically produce an available long-term home. As I have continually stated, the people who provide short-term rentals did not create the housing crisis. Nor are they responsible for fixing that problem. We must consider the amendments and deal with them in a practical way. These families have invested their own money and years of their lives. They deserve a fair chance.

We all recognise that there are issues in some cities. However, it appears that the Government is hell-bent on introducing a one-size-fits-all approach. It has made an absolute hames of this. I do not know if the Minister of State understands the word that Deputy Michael Healy-Rae used, but she will know what a hames is. It is something that used to go on a horse. In many rural communities, self-catering accommodation, holiday homes, farm stays, glamping facilities and other short-term rental accommodation are not part of housing and never will be. I do not know what the Government thought it was doing when it brought this Bill forward. Nor do I know where it got it from. One size does not fit all. We know that. We thought we had this sorted 12 months ago. I compliment Deputy Michael Healy-Rae. When he was a junior Minister, he made a lot of headway on this. Now, however, the Government is back to the drawing board. Who is wagging the tail of the Government? The left, with the exception of the Labour Party, has never been in power here, but the left is getting away with things in respect of many issues. I refer to social and other issues, and here again. I listened to those on the left the other night. You would think they were living in a utopia. In rural Ireland, we have very little. I want to salute the men and women - especially the women in many cases, as has been said here – who operate these Airbnbs, rentals and small houses. There is a great man in my parish, Tomás O'Keeffe. He converted a lovely little thatched house that I often ate my dinner in when his mother and father were alive. It was becoming derelict. It was located in the middle of the farm. This was a lovely thatched cottage in which a big family was reared. They are all gone off now and doing well for themselves, buíochas le Dia. That is inside in the farm. It will never be a full-time let. A woman from Dundrum in Tipperary contacted me. Again, her property is located in the middle of the farm. These properties will never be housing. You could not have them where there are animals and all kinds of farm activities going on. It is a European directive here again. The same thing always happens with European directives. There are so many mandarins in the Department and so many senior officials. I spoke to an engineer in Waterford County Council. It is impossible to deal with officials in Transport Infrastructure Ireland, the Department, An Taisce and, of course, the OPW. These officials need a rude awakening. The need to be brought down to rural Ireland and shown what is going on and how people have to live. It is wonderful to have these little outlets in our rural communities in order that strangers can come in. We do not have hotels. We have barely a pub left. This type of tourism offering brings in a nice mix of people. Those people go to the pub and the shops, they go out walking, they meet locals and immerse themselves in local communities. That is good for our culture and it promotes change and everything else. The Government has added much more to this than was ever asked for by the EU. I do not know what is at. This is déjà vu, because a previous Government did it with bedsits. I was in the Dáil when all the clamour around getting rid of bedsits occurred. The legislation brought forward then got rid of 1,000 units of accommodation overnight, and people had nowhere to go except out onto the streets. It is the very same with this Bill because the Government will not get anything like the numbers it is dreaming about. It thinks there is a magic wand that will deliver many housing units, but that is complete poppycock. They are not there. I have listened to Government backbenchers talking all night about it. I do not know what will happen when it comes to the vote in an hour or two. Will they put their money where their mouths are? It is terrible that they cannot exercise power over the Minister. This is no disrespect to the Minister of State, but Deputy Healy-Rae was right that it is shocking that the senior Minister could not be here for such an important debate. That is what those in government think of rural Ireland. I refer to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, which were supposed to represent the daoine beag, the small people, in rural Ireland. It is a case of to hell or to Connacht once again for the people who put their hands in their pockets and invested in restoring lovely old buildings - some of them are historic or listed buildings - and brought people into communities. They worked hard, night and day, when they were busy at weekends and during holiday time. Throughout the rest of the year, the family can use them and so on, but they would never be housing units. They are not built for that, and they are in the wrong place. It will not happen. The Government has got this fundamentally wrong. It has to go back to the drawing board.

Here is the Government again at the Airbnbs. It cannot stop. I have always believed that if someone buys, builds or inherits a house, they can do what they want with it and cannot to be forced to do something they do not want to do with it. Here is the Government again trying to bring in laws retrospectively. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have joined together to put owners who work hard out of business. These people have worked hard to make a bit of money to send their children to college or to get extra money in order to just keep going. People face tough times in the countryside too, in case the Government thinks they do not. It wants them to go into long-term letting but they will not do that. Not a single house will be gained out of them. At the same time, there are vacant houses around the country and I have been told several times about them. Nothing at all is done to bring those houses back into use and to get people to rent them long-term and do something with them but the Government has given them no incentive. They are taxed at 50% if they let to someone and if they want their house back in a year or a year and a half, they cannot get it back again. Those are the things the Government should be dealing with. We have a lot of public buildings you could house people in. Take St. Finan's in Killarney. It is closed for nearly 20 years. You could house 2,000 people in it but those are the things the Government will not do. This will have serious implications for employers - people who work hard in this industry - and their employees. It provided a valuable income for all of those people. Now, the Government is giving them four weeks to register. If they need a certificate, whether it is a fire, electrical, plumbing or heating certificate or anything like that, where will they get that at short notice and during the weeks of Christmas? The Government has no consideration at all for people or what it actually means to get a registered builder to do something for you. They are not there. They are not available. It just will not happen like that. Some of these houses were built in the middle of farms and were left by grandparents. They were done up nicely and they create a bit of income. They will never be long-term lets. There are people coming back to them at set times of the year, for Christmas holidays or summer holidays. They will not rent them out long-term. I cannot understand the logic of what the Government is doing. They are the grandest of hard working people around and it looks to me like the Government wants to sort a Dublin social housing problem by tackling people in rural Kerry. We do not have enough hotels or any hotels in some rural parts of Kerry. We need these Airbnbs to work alongside guest houses and hotels, to work with the jarveys, boat men, taxi men, bus men and all of the people it takes to create an industry. Now, the Government is making Fáilte Ireland go after them, which I thought was meant to sell our products abroad. Now, it is going to close places down. This is the actual fact of what the Government is doing. It is getting Fáilte Ireland to close people down instead of organising our tourists for next year, bringing in more people and ensuring people come here. These people will not make a bob at all if they cannot have tourists for a few weeks in the summertime. They are depending on it but now the Government has Fáilte Ireland doing something else altogether.

I thank everybody for their contributions, observations and concerns they have raised tonight. I have taken note of them all and will share them with the Ministers, Deputies Burke and Browne, as well. In closing, I thank all Deputies for their thoughtful contributions to this debate and for the careful consideration given to this important legislation. The discussion has reflected both the complexity of the issues involved and the importance of getting this policy right. Members from across the House have highlighted the significant contribution that short-term letting makes to tourism and local economies while also acknowledging the genuine concerns that exist regarding housing availability in many communities. Those are legitimate perspectives and they are precisely why this legislation seeks to achieve a balanced and proportionate outcome. At its core, this Bill is about ensuring that Ireland has a modern, transparent and effective regulatory framework for a sector that has evolved significantly in recent years. The growth of online booking platforms and the rapid expansion of short-term letting activity have transformed the accommodation landscape and yet, the regulatory framework has not kept pace with those changes. The State does not currently have a complete picture of the scale or distribution of short-term letting activity, nor does it have the comprehensive data required to effectively monitor compliance with planning requirements or to support evidence-based policy making. This legislation addresses that gap. For the first time, it will establish a comprehensive national register of short-term lets, providing transparency and accountability across the sector. It will create a reliable source of information for policymakers, regulators and of course, the public. It will strengthen oversight, improve compliance and ensure that Ireland meets its obligations under EU law, particularly in relation to the implementation of the EU short-term rental regulation. A number of concerns have been raised throughout this debate about the potential effects of these measures on tourism. This legislation is not designed to undermine tourism, nor is it intended to restrict legitimate tourism accommodation unnecessarily. Tourism remains one of Ireland's most important indigenous industries. It supports employment, investment and economic activity in every region of the country. It sustains livelihoods in rural communities, coastal areas, towns and cities and enriches the social, cultural and economic life of our communities. The Government fully recognises that contribution and remains committed to supporting a competitive, resilient and sustainable tourism sector. However, we must recognise that housing availability and affordability are among the most pressing challenges facing the country. In certain locations, particularly those experiencing sustained housing pressure, the growth of short-term letting activity has contributed to concerns regarding the availability of homes for local residents. While short-term letting is not the sole cause of those pressures, it would be irresponsible to ignore its impact where that impact is evident. The challenge for Government is, therefore, not to choose between tourism and housing. Both are national priorities. The challenge is to ensure that they can coexist in a way that is sustainable and balanced. This Bill is founded on that principle. The measures contained in the legislation have been carefully designed to support that balance. The Bill does not impose a blanket prohibition on short-term letting. It does not seek to remove legitimate accommodation from the tourism market. Instead, it seeks to ensure that short-term letting operates within a clear and transparent framework, one that provides certainty for operators, transparency for regulators and most importantly, confidence for communities. An important element of that framework is planning compliance. The national planning statement approved by the Government on 3 November provides a clear and consistent national planning policy for short-term letting activity. It establishes certainty for property owners, local authorities and communities. The Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy James Browne, has introduced a streamlined change-of-use planning process specifically for short-term letting properties. The planning and development change of use regulation for short-term letting, which came into operation on 29 September 2026, significantly simplifies the retention application process. Applicants are no longer required to submit many of the detailed plans and documentation normally associated with planning applications and a dedicated application form has been introduced specifically for these cases. These changes are intended to reduce administrative burdens and provide a straightforward pathway to compliance for operators who wish to continue their activity within the new framework. The Bill further acknowledges that adjustment will take time. That is why it provides for a two-year transition period for hosts operating in smaller towns and rural areas with populations of fewer than 20,000 people. This transition period reflects the Government's recognition that circumstances vary across the country and that a measured approach is necessary. It provides sufficient time for operators to understand the requirements, regularise their position where necessary and adapt to the new system. Taken together, these measures demonstrate that the Government's approach is not punitive. It is practical, proportionate and phased. It combines clear rules with reasonable transition arrangements and meaningful supports. Importantly, the Bill goes beyond short-term letting alone. It modernises Ireland's wider tourism accommodation registration framework, strengthens governance arrangements, establishes independent appeals mechanisms and creates a dedicated framework for visitor stays in student-specific accommodation outside term time. These reforms will improve the quality of regulation, strengthen consumer confidence and provide better data and oversight across the accommodation sector as a whole. Ultimately, this legislation is about ensuring that growth takes place in a managed and transparent way. As the accommodation sector continues to evolve, it is essential that policymakers have access to accurate information and that accommodation being used for tourism purposes is visible, accountable and operating within the appropriate regulatory framework. That is not an unreasonable objective; indeed, it is the minimum that citizens should expect from a modern regulatory system. What would be difficult to justify is maintaining the status quo indefinitely. It would be difficult to explain why the State should continue to lack basic information about the scale of activity taking place in this sector. It would be difficult to explain why concerns regarding housing availability should simply be set aside, and to explain why Ireland should delay implementing a regulatory framework that provides transparency, accountability and compliance with European requirements. For these reasons, I firmly believe that the legislation strikes the right balance. It recognises the importance of tourism while acknowledging the need to protect housing supply. It supports legitimate operators while ensuring appropriate oversight. It provides clarity, certainty and transparency, while equipping the State with the tools necessary to better understand and manage the sector in the years ahead. This is a necessary, proportionate and forward-looking reform. It reflects the realities of a changing accommodation market, responds to the challenges facing communities and provides a sustainable framework for future growth. I, therefore, commend the Bill to the House and look forward to continuing constructive engagement with Members as it progresses through the remaining Stages in the Oireachtas. Gabhaim buíochas le gach duine.