Councillor Patrick Costello calls for Minister Murphy to introduce regulation of short term lets as Dublin City loses homes and income

Green Party Dublin City Councillor Patrick Costello today called for Minister for Housing Eoghan Murphy act to correct an anomaly whereby commercial AirBnB style short term lets are not paying commercial rates, a requirement of all commercial businesses in the city.

AirBnB style short term lettings over 60 days per year are considered commercial operations, requiring planning permission. It has emerged that they are not required to pay commercial rates.

In response to questions by Councillor Patrick Costello, Dublin City Council stated that “While aparthotels are rateable, no rates were charged on any individual residential properties that were used for the provision of accommodation on a short-term basis.”

Councillor Costello said: “Recent reports have said that half of available properties in Dublin available for rent are short term tourist lets, shrinking the housing available to rent. Now it seems that as well as reducing rental supply, commercial short term lets are denying revenue to Dublin City Council, revenue it needs to build houses and pay for the running of the city.

“Short term letting companies can provide great opportunities for tourists and landlords, but we need to get the balance right, and at the minute we have it all wrong – we are putting tourists into homes and homeless people into hotels. We need better regulation in this area to deal with the all these issues.”

“The reality is, without local government reform, the city has no power to regulate and has to rely on the Minister for Housing and on central government – and they are doing nothing.”

A cross-government working group was convened by Minister Eoghan Murphy and was to report in December 2017, but has produced nothing to date.

The question, in full, put by Councillor Patrick Costello can be found here.