Cynthia Ní Mhurchú: 'Restricting Airbnbs will ruin local economies like the Dingle peninsula'

My party plans to restrict short-term lets by requiring planning permission, a process that could cost thousands of jobs in tourism-reliant rural areas

Dingle is home to thousands of people who depend on tourism to make their day-to-day living. 

Philip Fitzgibbon runs a surf school and waterpark on the north shore of the Dingle Peninsula, right on the edge of my constituency. He employs local people. His sister runs a dive centre just three miles up the road, and his other sister operates a laundrette in nearby Castlegregory village. That laundrette washes many of the sheets for the local Airbnbs that cater for the thousands of tourists that come to visit this beautiful part of the world every year.

This incredible stretch of sandy beach-lined coast is home to thousands of people who depend on tourism to make their day-to-day living. 

From horse-riding schools to surfing, to the laundrettes that wash the sheets, to the bars and restaurants that feed people, to the buses and taxis that ferry them around and the boat drivers that show them the beauty of our oceans, to the local shops that sell them ice creams.

Kerry County Council has been issuing 'cease and desist' letters to Airbnb hosts on the peninsula for the past year, but at the same time, it has an abysmal record when it comes to granting planning permission for tourist specific accommodation on Dingle’s north shore.

There are no hotels on this stretch of coastline, from Tralee town to Cloghane village, and only a handful of guesthouses. Kerry County Council has been issuing "cease and desist" letters to Airbnb hosts on the peninsula for the past year, but at the same time, it has an abysmal record when it comes to granting planning permission for tourist specific accommodation on Dingle’s north shore.

In 2001, Kerry County Council refused planning to the Shore Acre Caravan Park to expand the park by 30 units. In 2004, it refused permission to build a 41-bed hotel in Camp. Just 12 months later, Kerry County Council refused planning for 10 holiday homes in Garrahies, Camp. 

In early 2020, Kerry County Council refused a tourist glamping park in Castlegregory village, and also issued a refusal for tourism accommodation at Sandy Feet farm just outside Camp village on the peninsula.

Kerry County Council may argue it is supportive of the tourism industry in Kerry but it has not facilitated the level of accommodation that is needed to cope with demand. That demand is now being met with private short-term lets. Picture: Dan Linehan

Kerry County Council may argue it is supportive of the tourism industry in Kerry but it has not facilitated the level of accommodation that is needed to cope with demand. That demand is now being met with private short-term lets. 

These are the very same short-term lets a proposed Government bill will shut down, precipitating an immediate crisis on this little peninsula and countless others like it. Shops will close, bars will have fewer customers, boat tour operators will cease, and people will lose their jobs in very rural parts of Ireland that depend on tourism.

In the rush to solve the housing crisis, we seem to be willing to accept a tourism crisis as collateral damage. 

This is against a backdrop where CSO figures are already tracking a worrying decline in tourism numbers — dropping 15% drop in March 2025 alone.

A recent ESRI report cast doubt on the initial proclamations of former tourism minister Catherine Martin when she announced crippling Airbnbs would bring up to 12,000 homes back into the long-term rental market. She made those claims without any quantitative evidence. 

With my background as a barrister, you will forgive me for demanding an evidence-based approach to any legislation — in particular legislation that will impact on the livelihood of a large swathe of the population in rural Ireland. The ESRI has said the impact of short-term lets like Airbnb on the rental sector has been exaggerated, yet still we persist.

The issue with a proposed register is not the register itself. The issue is whether hosts of short-term lets will have to get planning permission, a process whereby engineers, architects and lots of paperwork quickly clocks up a hefty €5,000 bill, with no guarantees planning permission will be the end result.

Perhaps instead we should put more focus on the red tape we have allowed to flourish in the long-term rental market. The Residential Tenancies Board was designed to protect renters but has succeeded in adding layers upon layers of red tape, which make small landlords reconsider their options.

Cynthia Ní Mhurchú: 'I am not saying conclusively that short-term lets are not an issue impacting on the rental stock, in particular in our cities. What I am saying is that we need a body of empirical evidence and targeted policy approaches that doesn’t adopt the ‘hammer to crack a nut’ approach to legislation.

If a rogue tenant stops paying their rent, it can take over a year to work through the official channels to get them out. Said rouge tenant does not have to abide by any RTB ruling and landlords must take them to court to enforce the ruling, raising the question: why not go straight to court? 

Landlord has become a dirty word in Ireland, but these are often "mom and pop" landlords who have worked hard to buy a second property to cushion their retirement. Some politicians rush to disown them, not embrace them as the hard-working providers of housing in the market.

Let’s be clear. I am not saying conclusively that short-term lets are not an issue impacting on the rental stock, in particular in our cities. What I am saying is that we need a body of empirical evidence and targeted policy approaches that doesn’t adopt the ‘hammer to crack a nut’ approach to legislation.

In New York, rent prices remain high and housing availability low, despite city authorities implementing one of the strictest short-term letting regulations in the world in 2023 (Local Law 18). Portugal is now in the process of repealing overly restrictive short-term let measures introduced less than one year ago because they are not working as expected. 

As a counterpoint, the city of Porto has taken a highly data-driven and sensible approach: limiting new short-term rentals in busy areas but also viewing them as a basis for urban regeneration in neglected quarters of the city.

Restricting short-term lets in a blanket fashion may do little more than destroy a tourism product that has taken decades to build. Picture: Dan Linehan

In Scotland, the government there was forced to water down its crackdown on holiday lets after being accused of driving away tourists. It ended up with just 15% of short-term lets registered, while the other 85% disappeared from the system entirely. 

The housing crisis is complex but I feel we are best-placed focusing our energy on removing the barriers to building more homes, be it planning bureaucracy, water, sewage and electricity connection issues, and vacancy rates.

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Restricting short-term lets in a blanket fashion may do little more than destroy a tourism product that has taken decades to build. Our policy position should not be to lurch from one crisis to another but rather look to implement measures based on real evidence, and a data-driven approach.

• Cynthia Ní Mhurchú is a Fianna Fáil MEP for Ireland South