Brendan Griffin (Kerry, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate and welcome that. While it is no fault of theirs, local authority planning officials will look at what is before them right now and will err on the side of caution when it comes to whether to grant planning permission for such cases. Ultimately, I fear that what would happen in such instances, and there are many more of them around the country, is that we have the opposite effect, where we end up with a significant black market when people cannot get planning permission but have a very high quality offering of accommodation and they need to look at alternative ways of filling those rooms just to try to get by and make a living. This is something that is going to have to be looked at sympathetically. Again, I make a clear difference between properties that were never on the long-term market and never will be on the long-term market because of proximity to the family home and all of those other complicating factors. I am referring to short-term accommodation.

There needs to be collaboration.

There needs to be joined-up thinking between the tourism and housing sides in that regard and with local government. What is the situation regarding properties, whether they are stand-alone or whatever type of property, that have been operating for more than seven years? Is there an exemption for somebody who has already been operating as a short-term rental for the past seven years or more and can prove it?