Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Maybe I should be a bit worried if Deputy Boyd Barrett thinks it is radical. We may need to take a step back. I appreciate the Deputy's comments. He is correct in saying that some people will try to get around this. People will always try to break or evade the law. The vast majority of people in this country are law abiding so they will move to regularise their position now they know these changes are coming into effect.

Regarding people who must give documentation to the planning authorities, we have provided very wide powers to them in terms of documentation they can request. The planning authorities have a history of dealing with people around where they live, their principal private residence, requesting documentation and looking at fake documentation. Local authorities will not be coming to a person blind and will not be coming without a deep suspicion. When they move to enforce, it will be because a lot of heavy lifting will have been done in the background to identify a property they think is being used for continuous short-term letting and is not somebody's home. They will move from a point of suspicion until they can ask for one document, two documents or a lot more documentation. We have enforced it in the regulations by saying that if someone knowingly gives a false documentation, this is an even greater breach separate to the planning laws, which provides for more enforceability powers as well. We have strengthened those aspects of things because we know that when it comes to that end of things, they will be dealing with people who probably are in breach and knowingly in breach so they will need those extra powers to be able to get that from them.