Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Robinson for the presentation. Before asking some questions I will just outline our own position. As I mentioned when I met Ms Mytton-Mills earlier this year, we are not against short-term lettings or home sharing. We support the concept, partly because of the benefits for tourism and partly because of the benefits for the hosts themselves. We think it is good for the city. Having said that, I made the point at the previous meeting that I am not a cheerleader for the more benign presentations of the collaborative economy. That is not to say I am against the idea, but I sometimes think people gloss over the fact that many of these business models, be they Amazon, Uber or Airbnb, were created because very smart business people saw gaps in the regulatory regimes and, as all business people do, went in to profit from them. I have no difficulty with that, but like many other European capitals, one of the things we are trying to do is play catch-up to ensure the sector is properly regulated to do exactly as Mr. Robinson outlined.

The real issue of concern to those of us who have been raising this matter over the past year is not with the person who shares out, either his or her home for a number of weeks in the year when he or she is away for work or holidays, or a room during the course of the year. That person is not the target of our deliberations. Our concern is whether people, knowingly or unknowingly to Airbnb, are abusing the platform either to make more money in ways we think to be inappropriate or to avoid tax, building standards or fire safety regulations. The problem is, however, that we do not know if this is happening here because we do not have the data to tell us. In some ways we should perhaps have had the Airbnb representatives in at the very start of the meeting. I am sure they have read the discussions from the earlier committee. Many of our conversations concerned whether or if there could a problem and the fact we do not know the extent of it. That is our difficulty.

I ask questions today in the hope that the witnesses can clarify whether and to what extent we have a problem. Even if we do not have a problem, the very fact there are very clearly problems in other European states makes it important we get in now to regulate and prevent them. I appreciate the detail of the data Mr. Robinson has given us, but they do not answer some of the questions that I put both to Ms Mytton-Mills when I met her in January or that I submitted to Airbnb by email just last week. I am interested in what I call units of accommodation. By this I mean self-contained units in the form of a house, an apartment or a granny flat, to use one of the examples used by Mr. Robinson in his presentation. Of the self-contained units on the Airbnb listings, or entire home listings as Mr. Robinson calls them, how many are not the primary residence? This is an important point for us to know because it is an important distinguishing factor. How many of these are in multi-unit developments? Of all these, how many are available, as opposed to let, for a full 12 months? How many are available for between six and 12 months and how many for between two and six months? This for me is how we identify whether there is a problem. We clearly do not have an issue if 95% of the lets are only available for a limited number of months in the year. This is the categorisation I am interested in.

I would also be interested to hear what the regulations would be if it were up to Airbnb itself to write them. This was not completely clear from Mr. Robinson's presentation. Of the models operated under by Airbnb's sister companies in other jurisdictions, which would the witnesses prefer? Which would they like to persuade us of? Mr. Robinson referred to this briefly, but I would also like to hear a more detailed response to Mr. Gavin Elliot's earlier comments on some of the legal grey areas in the Irish legal system.

Mr. Robinson mentioned a number of jurisdictions where things are going well for Airbnb. He did not of course mention the two jurisdictions where things are not going so well, namely, Barcelona and New York. I listened to the Barcelona housing manager at a conference in Dublin last week and he offered a very different presentation of the company's very specific difficulties in the city. According to him, Airbnb has been hit with a fine of €600,000 there. I know that there is probably an intention to appeal or challenge this. The company has been having real difficulties in New York city for more than a year and fines have started to be issued to hosts. The most recent one was, I believe, a fine of $5,000 for a set of issues.

While the witnesses present a very positive business model and willingness to engage, the company is clearly having real difficulties in two of its largest markets. Is it that the people running Airbnb in those two cities are not as friendly, co-operative and collaborative as our witnesses today or is there something else going on here? I would like to hear the witnesses' responses to these matters.