Ireland’s holiday home operators should not have to apply for planning permission for an existing product, Derek Nolan told the Irish Self Catering Federation conference at the Clayton Hotel, Liffey Valley.
Mr Nolan, who is Head of Public Policy and Government Relations, Ireland at Airbnb, said: “there are two things happening and we need to split them out. The first thing that’s happening is the Department of Tourism is bringing forward legislation to register short-term lets. I think everyone is broadly in favour of it. Everyone likes it. What that would do is put a clear stamp across the entire country of who’s doing short-term lets.
“The information that I gave for Airbnb would be applicable for the entire country. You’ be able to talk about spending and jobs and I think it’ll be a boon for our industry. It will become a metric that tourism will have to follow and tourism Ireland will be able to say we’ve increased the visitor spend. That’s good and we’ll be an official recognised and understandable part of the market.”
“Where the anxiety has come in is that, at the same time as they announced the register which, again, we all support, there was a sense that that this new, in saying everybody’s going to have to apply for Planning Commission, which people didn’t think they had to do. If you still look at the citizens information website just this morning it says and I quote, if you are not in a rent pressure zone you do not need planning permission to do short-term rentals.
“People in this room and around the country were told for years that they did not need planning permission if they were not in a rent pressure zone to do short-term rentals and that was what the sea change was in December.
Suddenly we have people, who think they’re doing the right thing, are told by the way there’s a register going to come in and you’re going to have to apply for Planning Commission and by the tone of the way it was announced at a political conference, that we’re going to kill 12,000 short-term rentals, it created a huge amount of fear.
That was done for a headline and when your industry is being treated as a headline that doesn’t engender trust in the industry.”
“I think that was where we got off to the wrong foot. Yes we need data. But before we go and put in place a registration system that people are afraid of, we need to make it clear who can and who cannot do short-term rentals.
People who’ve been doing it for years under the impression that they were perfectly legally entitled to do so having based on information on the citizens information website and on what local authorities told them was the case. because local authorities thought it was legal, should be left alone and you should have a kind of a status quo are in and if you want to do something new in the future that’s fine.
But we need to look after those people who’ve been doing the right thing as they saw it for and restaurants all over the country.
If we’re going to do a new regime let’s do a new regime but let’s not penalise and put out of business those who are already well established.”
Mr Nolan served as Labour Party TD for Galway west in 2011-16.
