Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I very much appreciate the support we have had through this process. This is very much a working committee and we get work done through heavy lifting around legislation and other changes we need to make. That is very much in evidence here when we look at what we are trying to do on short-term letting.

For clarity, A1 relates to home sharing and A2 relates to short-term lettings. To clarify for members of the public, home sharing refers to the sharing of one's own home or principal private residence, be it a room or the entire home, for a period not exceeding the cap of 90 days. Short-term letting is when the relevant property is not a person's private residence and home and it is being rented out on the short-term letting market.

There will be no cost for interacting with the local authority, which is an important point. We are not putting any cost burden on people. Most people will only need to communicate with the local authority twice a year, namely, at the beginning and end of the year when they inform the authority of what happened during the year. Form 16 is filled out when the 90-day cap is reached in one year but most people will not reach that level. Most people who do home sharing of their entire property will do so for the two weeks they are on holidays in the summer or a series of weekends at times they are away. Most people will only interact with the local authority twice in a year. They might have a third interaction if they reach the 90-day cap. We have removed, on the advice of the committee, the 45-day interaction.

These regulations will be the law on 1 July. I thank the Deputy for raising this matter in the Chamber yesterday so that people could be clear, early in the week, that this must happen this week. I particularly thank the Seanad for moving so quickly with the primary legislative changes so that we could proceed this week and have the regulations in place for 1 July. This will be the law. People who have a second property that they have been using for short-term letting can apply for planning permission through the normal planning permission procedures.

We will communicate with the local authorities in rent pressure zones the need to use common sense while an application for permission or retention is live. That said, certain local authorities, such as Dublin City Council which has been to the forefront on this, may already be involved in applying this in certain respects. That is a separate matter and we will not interfere in that because the council is the planning authority and makes its decisions independent of the Department. However, we have asked for common sense to apply. It is worth stating that we have been very clear about what we have been planning to do since October last year. The only real change has been that the date moved from 1 June to 1 July. There was uncertainty as to whether these changes would only apply in rent pressure zones and that was clarified earlier this year. People have known that these changes are coming. We have made clear our intent as to the separation between home sharing and short-term letting so there should be no surprises here for any of the platforms or anyone doing this as a business.