Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Following the issuing of a circular by my Department to local authorities last year, we are very close to a set of recommendations coming to me in approximately six weeks or by mid-April. At the same time, Dublin City Council is carrying out a study on short-term letting and we are reviewing the proposals from the joint committee's report. I have read those proposals and support many of them. I have looked at licensing arrangements in other cities relating to home sharing, which I support. The licensing arrangements that are in place seem to make a lot of sense. Airbnb produced some figures recently. While they are Airbnb's figures, what is interesting is that 70% of hosts on the platform in Ireland engage in home sharing, which involves people giving up their primary private residence for a weekend here or there or a week while they are away on holidays. What we have also seen from Airbnb's data is that the highest average number of nights being let over the course of a year is 53, which is well short of the 90 days recommended by the joint committee. If we were to move to a system of 90 days, for example, it would be well in excess of the highest average number of nights for short-term lettings in the country at the moment. As I said earlier, recommendations will come to me in the next number of weeks, at which point I will be able to engage with the committee and be able to go out to public consultation on the new measures we propose to introduce.

See this speech in context