Ms Niamh McGuire:

I thank the Deputy. On his first comments about the contracted State accommodation in hotels in Kerry, at its heights in May 2023, 11% of hotel beds in Kerry were contracted to the State for accommodation provision for humanitarian purposes. That reduced the following year to 9% and is now at 5%.

With regard to the short-term letting and other hotel capacity in Kerry, the number of short-term letting beds in entire houses and apartments in Kerry is 16,600. At a maximum, they are occupied 27% of the time when we look at the 2024 data. There is an under-occupancy of about 70% in those properties. In some cases, in January it was 3% and February was 5%. If we go then to the further end of the year, November and December, the occupancy rates were just 5% and 6%, respectively. Those properties were vacant for quite a length of time throughout the year.

If we look at the number of hotel accommodations overall, there are 38,650 bed spaces in Kerry and these are really important with regard to that accommodation provision to support what is a very vibrant tourist industry in Kerry. We know that of those, 16,000 would have been used 27% of the time but the hotel accommodation is generally available all of the time. It is a better supply element. Of course, there-----