Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank all the witnesses for joining us today for what will hopefully be a fruitful and productive discussion. I live in a small village in rural east Galway. Up until approximately five years ago, we never saw a tourist in our village or anywhere within close proximity to our village. With the advent of Airbnb, and the fact that we have three extraordinarily successful Airbnb hosts now operating within our community, I meet American, Scottish, French and Italian people on one of our local amenities; a wonderful forest walk of which we are very proud. There is no way in the wide, angry world that those tourists would have appeared in our community, and made an investment in our community while they were hosted there, without the advent of Airbnb. That is the simple fact of the matter.

Not alone does it allow those individual homeowners to showcase what they have to offer to the world; it allows them to showcase what east Galway has to offer to the world in terms of tourism. Aligned with that, through Airbnb's very clever algorithmic processes, it allows the people visiting to then look at all the other experiences that are available in east Galway and, indeed, slightly further afield.

We need to be exceptionally careful here in terms of how we are going to manage this, no question. Deputy Christopher O'Sullivan outlined Kinsale as one example. It is an issue that is repeated across a number of centres nationally whereby we see homes that could and should be made readily available for the rental market for people who need a home, as distinct from a place to stay. We need to be exceptionally careful, however. Mr. O'Mara Walsh at the very beginning of this discussion used the word "proportionate" in how we implement this process.

Increasingly across rural Ireland, from where Ms Noelle Casey is joining us this afternoon, we are seeing farm families finding it more difficult to survive and keep their farm businesses viable to ensure that they can send their kids to college and live a happy, successful life. That is becoming ever more difficult with a very difficult market in terms of securing prices for their produce and with an ever-moving regulatory regime moving underneath them. Having the additional income from the Airbnb or perhaps something on another platform is hugely important to those farmers who are seeking to sustain a life in rural Ireland. If we look at the agriturismo model in Italy, for example, more than 20,000 farmers are using that model, which is remarkably close to what Airbnb does in partnership with farmers here in Ireland. We need to be very careful. The nub of this issue, and Mr. Nolan, whom I welcome back to the Houses, by the way, made this point, is that at the heart of this debate are the new planning requirements associated with this legislation. Everybody is wholeheartedly supportive of the registration process and what that sets out to achieve. Aligned with that, however, there will be new a new regulatory environment from a planning perspective that we need to negotiate really carefully.

Ms Casey operates a short-term rental facility on her farm. Perhaps she would not mind outlining to us what that has meant to her in terms of her farm income and sustainability. What would Teagasc, our national farm advisory organisation, advise her and others to do to diversify in the future? What opportunities should she be looking out for and seeking to achieve? I would be very grateful if we could perhaps hear that first.