Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
AIRBNB AND SIMILAR short-term house sharing platforms offer real opportunities to both hosts and guests, and indeed to communities that are the real host.
However, while there are many other issues in the rental market in Ireland, particularly our major cities, the large volume of commercial short-term lettings on such platforms have caused significant problems.
We can get the balance of benefits and harm right but we have to put in effort to make it work. So far this has not happened and the sad reality is that we are putting tourists into houses and homeless people in hotels.
Disruptive
AirBnB has been disruptive, not just to hotels’ market share but also to rent prices and rental supply. AirBnB has been shown to drive up rents overall – research has repeatedly shown a link between increasing AirBnB listings and increases in average rent in the same neighbourhood.
It is important to note that the effects were more pronounced in areas with less owner-occupiers, where apartments and tenancies would be rented out on a commercial basis year round. AirBnB has also reduced rental supply.
Daft recently reported that about half the rental properties in Dublin were only available on a short-term basis through AirBnB. The accuracy of this assertion is difficult to test as much of this data is guessed at by third party groups such as Inside AirBnB who pull what data they can from a public website but who can never see the real workings.
Again, reduced supply is a result of commercial operators renting properties all year by way of short-term lets.
Loss of revenue
One other effect of commercial AirBnB hosts has been the loss of revenue to councils. In response to a question from myself, Dublin City Council stated: “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.”
While profiting from tourists coming to cities and towns, they are not paying their contribution to keep the community running so tourists will come.
The solution is simply robust regulation. We have seen in recent times city after city introducing regulations and control on AirBnB and other short-term letting services.
Many American and Canadian cities have long done so, as have European cities like Paris, Berlin, and Barcelona. Most recently Madrid announced strong and far reaching regulations. Their new regulations would completely rule out the sorts of commercial operators that rent out properties on a short term basis year round.
Regulations
Any regulations that are introduced must address the key difficulties – commercial operators and the lack of transparency. While a clear line between what is considered commercial and not commercial has been established by planning law, a positive obligation must be placed on AirBnB to regulate their trade.
When questions over the issue of tax paid on rental earnings arose the Revenue Commissioners has the power to demand the information they needed. It should be made an obligation on AirBnB to inform planning authorities, revenue and the local rates office that a host has crossed into a commercial volume.
Equally it could be an obligation on AirBnB that a host is prevented from using their platform for commercial volumes without presenting proof of planning permission, tax clearance, rates payments, and an appropriate health and safety setup. Either way, AirBnB cannot be passive in its facilitation of questionable practices that are harming communities.
Enfeebled local government
Given our enfeebled local government our councils don’t have the powers to introduce the regulation that other cities have. In Dublin we have relied on planning permission for what would be commercial operations; however there is a real challenge with enforcement.
There is a difficulty for planning enforcement staff to gather the evidence of this – again much of the information is not made public leaving enforcement staff a real challenge to make a case. For real regulation to get an appropriate balance and to put obligations on AirBnB as facilitator local authorities are left in the unfortunate position of waiting on central government to act.
The reality is this government have done nothing concrete. The Oireachtas Housing Committee published a report, but its recommendations have not been acted on. The minister for Housing has established a cross-government working group – this was due to publish a report in December 2017 but is still being worked on at this point.
In so many other areas of housing policy this government has shown an inability to act, it is disappointing but not surprising that it is the same in relation to short term lettings.
We can get the balance of benefits and harm right but we have to put in effort to achieve this, effort this government has not put in at all.
Patrick Costello is a Green Party Councillor for Rathgar – Rathmines, and sits on both the Housing and the Planning strategic policy committees in Dublin City Council.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Then the Department of Health wonder where all the extra money goes they give hospitals. No accountability whatsoever, time for sweep out all these big, not for purpose entities.
Am i reading this right? One publicly funded agency, HSE, is giving our tax money to another publicly funded entity, UL, to set up a hypothetical private company with public taxes to hire workers who dont receive public benefits and neither the HSE or UL will account for how the money is being spent or why anyone hired should be hired without state benefits since they are being hired with our tax money.
@Ronan Murphy: No doubt Donnelly will soon tell us he is awaiting an external report on this.
The wonderful financial mismanagement of continuous FFG rule.
Another tax please?
@Roy Dowling: Ah that awl chestnut. That’s an easy line to throw out and implies that it’s wages from union agreements that have caused it to spiral. No substance behind that and you shouldn’t throw out lines like that if you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about!….. Do you really think it’s caused the HSE budget to jump from 13.3B in 2012 to 23.5b in 2024?!?! Total pay for the whole HSE in 2022 was 7.2B, of that non-clinical management/admin was €992.5m.
@another one? what’s going on is the semi state sec: I didn’t read it that way, I read it that the strong unions are preventing the removal of useless staff, changes to work practices etc not that the pay was too high.
I work in the public sector and see it there as well with managers and staff refusing to change work practices, refusing to do work delegated and actively sabotaging others work to try and get ahead.
I was surprised the recruitment firm couldn’t give a figure until I read that it’s a “not for profit public sector” recruitment firm. That explains it.
@Tom D: That’s a good one. Not for profit public sector recruitment firm.
@Tom D: well said Tom….” not for profit – say no more!!!
Obscene….. And not even for frontline staff!!!! No wonder the HSE budget has increased by around 10 billion in 12 years with this sort of spending. I’ll bet there’s some serious gouging here because it was a state contract!…… Another inquiry needed!
@another one? what’s going on is the semi state sec: RTE was just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the waste and greed of our public sector, especially the management layers.
Hse has rte accounting issues, any chance of an independent audit.
The money was just resting in their accounts
Beyond joke!
Needs a full independent investigation. Employment rights being exploited. HSE and UL need to be held to account
the levels of mismanagement in the crooked Irish system are absolutely breathtaking
it needs to COLLAPSE
As the old saying says: The only place there isn’t a FIDDLE is in a BRASS BAND.
Cheap labour market, no training, paid 13 euros, serious breaches of the temp agency act under equal pay. Placing these agency staff in higher grades but paying the minimum, HSE staff on the panels then can’t access the full-time positions, both UL and uhl guilty of breach of employment rights and law. Another enquiry needed to show the full rot.
@Lourda Finn: Spot on, €14 Million in one particular year for placement of 1500 staff, something very rotten about those figures, someone is creaming it somewhere. The HSE is a corrupt organization, the constant requests for Work Permits for nurses, they have got rid of Irish nurses & are replacing them with cheap agency labour from India. The abuses of monies in the HSE are breathtaking, yet we are paying massive salaries to Stephen Donnelly, Robert Watt & Bernard Gloster, the 3 of them should be fired, along with all senior Executives.
no accountability Ireland, ceo’s, consultants and managers walk off into the sunset, with no consequences for their actions, while the Hse pay out billions in lawsuits during a recruitment freeze, it beggers belief…
Like with 2008 crash then again with the 2020 lockdown the slate should of been be wiped clean and started a fresh. But no our governments just gave a way more. We like a dripping tap needing a 10 cent washer but instead we give out multi million euro bucket contracts and then pay big salaries to a management team to look after them and then another to empty them.
Another scandal another day in Ireland
Yea that would be in keeping with the FFG in government, no shock or surprise, just tax the paye more when you start getting low in the coffers
@N D K: I would vote for any party whose sole policy was total reform of our public services, unfortunately there is no party even mentioning it. Our tax take should allow us to provide excellent services but in most areas they are shambolic (bar revenue of course, who are excellent).
All these public institutions needs to be looked into by a company the same as CAB,but not from Ireland,The Banks,HSE,Local County Councils,The planning department,Justice, civil servants,the parties in power,we need to find out since Trica.this isnt done nothing changes,if people have committed crimes,need to be dealt with the same as us,and if people r caught,they be made pay back,and lose the golden retirement.they know everything about us,when Covid came,in less than 2 weeks the revenue were able to put in place the Covid payment for the worker,if u want to draw stamps, make u wait weeks,if ur disabled,once off need payment,their refusing irish people,I think it’s coz their budget for the year,the foreigners r included in that,eff the Irish
Wow not suprised as HSE all over. Wonder what EX HSE manager is leading this UL company
If these bozos in the public sector ran businesses in the private sector, they be bankrupted after a month
UHL in the news again today for all the wrong reasons.
The midless billions that were and are being wasted by the HSE and the health boards of the past is just cringing to think about
…real money,tax payers money.
….we never really cracked how to run a health sevice
The fact that our population is gone up
50% in 30 years is a major contributing factor….I suppose
This is the new circular economy. HSE dumps a great wad of cash into UL, but they don’t know what, if anything, they might have gotten for it. Don’t ask UL, sure they’re no good with money. But it does enable UL to buy 20 houses for €13 million, despite the real value being €6 million, despite them being designated social housing and despite having no planning approval to be used as student accommodation.
Meanwhile, despite all these new hypothetical admin staff, Limerick hospital ED is like a continuous battle zone and is unfit for patients or the people who have to work there, and even the look of it is like some run-down Eastern block institution.
I love seeing journalists investigating the powerful!
I had this mad idea that that’s what they were supposed to do but when you look at a lot that passes for journalism it’s not there! Good article, keep ‘em coming!
Another UL corruption story. How deep does this rabbit hole go?
Utter madness.the fish rots from the head down.
That is rubbish, they have a payroll accounts system, does anyone know how to count the people on it.
Another RTE…. needs to be a serious inquiry into the goings on at the HSE.
@Steve Davis: in terms of the hse and misbehaviour, mishandling s by them compared to in rte (A politically biased, unethical broadcaster) id say its 200:3 in an approximate ratio. no wait, the hse is probably on 2 000 and rte 3
Time to stop hiring agency staff, and using private sector to fill public jobs, plenty of people in child care, and social care that could make great nurses, if points were reduced here, allowing many more to qualify. And train them like before, nurses don’t need degree courses, they just need empathy and care, and a decent wage. Most hospitals are run by reg staff, it’s a box ticking exercise when you go through A And E. Head injury have a ultrasound,
Break a leg have an ultrasound, crazy.
LOL
H.s.e cowboys couldn’t run a proverbial p—s up in a brewery.
have your say