Mr. Mike Allen:

Our discussion has concentrated almost entirely on Dublin. To broaden it a bit, from family connections in Leitrim, which has the lowest rents in Ireland and supposedly the largest amount of empty property, I know that it is virtually impossible for people to rent privately in the area because virtually everything that is available is in Airbnb. While it is not necessarily leading to homelessness it is leading to housing precariousness for couples in those circumstances. It is not just a question of homelessness but the overall impact on the private rental market.

We regularly get proposals for innovative ideas. Focus Ireland and the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive are regularly confronted late at night with the problem of helping families when there is no emergency accommodation and no hotels are available. Contingency beds are made available in hotels that are partly under construction, which is less than ideal and which leads to problems. There is some very serious misinformation from some quarters about what is going on there. It is certainly problematic. People propose from time to time that we use Airbnb for this sort of situation. That would be a further wrong step in our response to the crisis because that is short-term accommodation and is not part of any medium to long-term solution. That is one innovative solution I mention and denounce at the same time. In the United States, where Airbnb is coming under criticism, it is offering to house refugees. We need to distinguish public relations exercises from the substantive issue.

It is absolutely crucial to distinguish between the problems arising because we do not have good enough legislation because things have changed, and the problems arising because we have not bothered to implement the legislation and regulations that we have in place. Most of the examples we are giving are of non-implementation of regulations. There is increasing and welcome regulation of the private rented sector and taxation of landlords, which is all great. However, if there is another area where places can be rented out, ignore planning legislation and not pay tax, of course there is a problem. While it is the responsibility of local authorities to implement regulations, it is the responsibility of the Houses of the Oireachtas to be much stronger in demanding that. One issue to consider is how the policing of it is funded and how much of the savings that would be made by implementing the regulations would actually go to the local authorities and, therefore, create a funding source for them to be able to do this, as opposed to what happens now whereby people do not tend to regulate systems where there is no benefit to them from the regulation. As a result, the benefit goes into somebody else's pocket. That might be considered to get this working. To be tied up in long discussions about new legislation when we cannot be bothered to implement existing planning or tax legislation would be time misspent.