Eoghan O'Brien

Well, first of all, Seamus is incorrect in that currently if you take planning enforcement, if somebody builds an unauthorised development, sure, enforcement action can't be taken after seven years, but they still need planning permission.

And if they want to, for example, sell that property, they have to regularise it.

So it's not the case that somebody doesn't need the planning permission after seven years.

It's just the enforcement legislation has that.

But you see, here's what the government is missing.

So we need two things in these regulations.

In urban areas, and not areas above 20,000, that's a completely arbitrary number, in urban areas where there's a homelessness crisis and a shortage of private rental, we need a very strict regime where if you've got planning permission for long-term residential occupation and you're currently short-term letting that property commercially, it needs to go back into long-term residential occupation.

And in those rural countryside areas where there is a really important tourism offering within the short-term letting sector,

We need that to be regularised, but in a way that allows local authority to determine what's the correct volume of that in the right location.

And then on top of that, we need an enforcement regime that works.

Because when I listen to Seamus, it sounds like Owen Murphy back in 2019.

He introduced a set of regulations.

It was going to do all of the things Seamus just said these regulations are.

And it did not work.

And that's exactly it.

And we warned Owen Murphy at the time because, in fact, his regulations were based on a cross-party Oireachtas report that we published in 2018 that set out the kind of regime that we needed.

But we told the government then, without adequate enforcement, it's not going to work.

Planning enforcement does not work.

It has been tried and tested in the courts by Dublin City Council and Cork City Council.

A board falter register is very welcome.