Mr. Derek Nolan:

There are two things from our side. Let us get the registration system right. We have concrete concerns about the way the legislation is drafted from a European perspective that we think is incompatible. That is why it is great that we have these pre-legislative hearings so that these can be remedied, hopefully in the meantime.

I would say the important thing for tourism, the committee and for the country is for us to have a rational discussion about what kind of short-term tourism letting market we want and what are the positives that it can bring, to rural Ireland and urban Ireland. Think about festivals, matches and games that happen in Dublin for example. Without short-term tourism capacity, people renting out their own home or a spare room, there is not the capacity to deal with St. Patrick's Day, for example, or all those big festivals. The next thing is to start carving out types of use cases that keep coming up. People have been doing short-term rentals for years. As for self-catering in rural Ireland, how should rural Ireland be treated differently to rent-pressure zones? We need to really tease out where that balance is because that is the most important discussion, namely, what do we want the sector to look like. Then, when we have that done, we can decide that these are the rule that are in place. I firmly believe they should be done in a way that encourages people to participate so that you do not have to go through the planning process as much as possible. Once that is up and running, you bring in the registration system and you can understand then what the market is like. If you look at the data, you can see how things are going and if there are areas we think need to be tweaked, then the Oireachtas can always come back in. That is my view: we should take a breath. As Housing for All says, it is about getting the balance right between long-term rental accommodation and tourism. As I said, there is a lot at stake. For Mayo it is €25 million in guest spending which is a lot of money in Mayo. For Kerry it is €65 million. There is a lot of money, jobs, livelihoods and people who depend on this income, as Ms Ní Mhurchú said, for their pensions, for their income for their retirement and to pay for the properties that are actually there. Let us just do that bit of work first; spend a bit of time on it and get it right. That is the thing that I think is the right thing to do.