Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their opening statements. It is no harm to remind ourselves of the intention of this legislation and the intention of the register. Following on from Threshold's opening statement, it is not just to establish how many short-term tourism lets there are but also to try to get more long-term letting back into the market. It is something we all agree needs to happen. For several reasons, landlords have been leaving the market in their droves. We have not built enough houses and there has not been enough supply. There has been a huge knock-on effect for people seeking long-term rented accommodation.

We cannot lose sight of that, especially in urban areas.

I want to use the example of Kinsale, which is a town in my constituency. It is a popular tourism town but it is also a vibrant town to live in. What will be seen happening there, and people talk about it and people who visit our constituency offices will say, that people cannot get rental accommodation. This has a knock-on for people who are looking for people to fill vacancies, teaching posts and jobs in hospitals and in different sectors. It has a knock-on effect throughout. It is certainly something we need to tackle. People will say they search for rental property, they identify vacant premises and, in a significant percentage of those cases, they find those properties are on Airbnb. That is an issue. Kinsale is in a rent pressure zone. I would doubt whether the regulations of it being in a rent pressure zone are being pursued properly because an extraordinary portion of those properties are on Airbnb - probably more than should be in a rent pressure zone. That is the issue. It is something we all know is happening. We agree there is a shortage of rental accommodation.

That said, the points made by the Irish Self Catering Federation are spot on in terms of the impact it will have in rural areas in particular. While I have Kinsale in my constituency, I also have vast areas of the Wild Atlantic Way, and Ms Ní Mhurchú's boreen is one of those areas. Unless we listen to the calls of the Irish Self Catering Federation to do this in parallel with planning, we will potentially mess things up for rural Ireland and its economic vibrancy. There is a fear we will constrict rural economies that depend heavily on tourism, and I can see that happening.

Deputy Munster asked about some of the complications that could happen. I am already seeing these complications happening. People who have self-catering accommodation on the premises are already experiencing these difficulties with planning permission. They see this legislation coming down the tracks. They are trying to get their planning permissions through so they are compliant, and they are being refused left, right and centre. It is already happening. There could be an instance where somebody had planning permission, for example, for a granny flat. It was built for the purpose of catering for and looking after elderly parents. The elderly parents may have passed away and now they are using this unit to gain an additional income, as our witnesses have pointed out. However, it does not have planning for short-term letting; it has planning for a granny flat. When they go to rectify that, they are being turned down because the boreen is too narrow to accommodate extra traffic or perhaps because the wastewater treatment is older and not compliant. They are being turned down for a range of reasons. Unless we rectify the planning policy, we will lose accommodation throughout swathes of the west and south west – throughout the entire nation, to be honest. It will have a massive knock-on effect.

This needs to be done in conjunction with planning legislation. The sad reality is that when those granny flats or whatever they are do not get planning permission, they will not be used for short-term letting and they definitely will not be used for long-term letting either. They remain empty and vacant. That is something we cannot allow happen.

What if a unit does not get planning permission because the policy has not adapted? Planners, from what I can see, are against this type of unit anyway. In my experience in west Cork, they do not like them. I do not know what the issue is. If members of the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation do not get planning for these units because of the policy, where do they go? Do they go into long-term accommodation or are they just left vacant?