Máire Ní Mhurchu

We are actually in favour of the register.

We believe it's important to bring a register in and it's actually an EU directive, so every country in the EU needs to bring it in at some stage.

There is an opt-out clause, but we don't believe that Ireland should do that.

However, we don't think that we are going to be ready for the 20th of May deadline because Ireland, unlike other countries, is bringing in two pieces of legislation at the same time.

So we're bringing in a register for short term rental, which is just an online portal where you register your property and you have to put the number of that property up on all your advertising from then onwards.

However, to get on the register, you need to have SDR planning and an awful lot of small businesses do not have SDR planning.

Yeah, short-term rental planning.

And because of the rent pressure zones, we haven't been able to get it for some years.

a lot more complicated because there's no national planning statement coming out from the Department of Housing.

And at an Oireachtas meeting, we called in February for exemptions for some existing businesses.

So in other words, that we could get the register in place.

And we also talked to the Department of Housing a year ago about decoupling the register from the planning requirement.

And we feel that it's important to get a register in place

to give confidence to consumers and the government is not doing this at the moment.

Well, the thing is the planning was brought in for all short-term rentals in 2019 and it's a retrospective planning requirement.

So in other words, I've been in business since 2002 and I will be now expected to get planning as well.

Well, the problem is many short-term rental owners don't earn a huge amount of money and they find that the planning requirements varies from county to county.

So, for example, in Donegal, they're talking about bringing in an application form, charging you a few hundred euros and giving you planning.

In Cork and Kerry, there is a full planning application, despite the fact that the house has already been there for 60 or 70 years and been working as a short-term rental.

No, and we would like the government to come out and make a statement as to what they want to do.