Michael Collins: Why the May 20 Registration Deadline Is Unclear

Thank you, Ciann Comhairle. Taoiseach, I want straight answers today on the delay and the disorder surrounding the short-term letting and tourism bill. The general scheme was approved by government last April, yet here we are again with no bill published, no final planning guidance and no clarity for the people whose livelihoods are directly affected. At the same time, tens of thousands of small, family-run accommodation providers, many of them in rural and coastal communities that we represent and indeed across the whole of Ireland, are still being told they must be ready to comply with new rules by 20 May 2026. They are being asked to plan their futures, their homes and their businesses without seeing a single line of the law they are supposed to comply with. Taoiseach, that is not good governance. Can you explain to this House why the bill has not been published? I raised this issue numerous times with you and others and you still went ahead and ran through the Presidential Tenancies Amendment Act 2025. I have highlighted over and over again since then that this bill will destroy small, rural family businesses across the whole Western seaboard. You are trying to make criminals of ordinary, decent taxpayers. The Tourism Committee did do pre-legislative scrutiny in January and I attended and spoke at it. I pleaded with your government to use common sense. The report still is not published. I have asked for a full debate on the issue every week since then at the Business Committee and here on the floor of the Dáil Ta Nóibh Eid. Last Tuesday I put down a topical issue on the matter. Neither the Senior Minister nor any of his two sidekicks could come into the House to debate the issue. Instead I got a well-worn stock answer delivered by a random Junior Minister who appeared to lack a good grasp of the issue. The papers today are reporting that the whole scheme is being kicked back to the summer or beyond. Yet I can't get a straight answer here in the House. There are rumblings of backbench division on this issue. Well Taoiseach, if recent history has taught you anything, my advice would be that you sit up and listen on this one. If not to me, then to those sitting behind you. You must not force families out of business for a foolish notion that you will free up thousands of properties for rental markers. Or is the idea to freeze them for the thousands in compliance fees while flushing a good going element of the rural economy down the toilet. So I will ask you Taoiseach, will you confirm for the House that the registration deadline of May 20th is dead in the water? Confirm when the legislation will be published? Commit not to ram it through the House without proper debate and consideration of opposition amendments? And will you consider making the accommodation I have repeatedly asked for, that the established operators are treated with respect and granted a planning exemption in order to comply with false Ireland registration? Thank you Deputy. Taoiseach please. Deputy, first of all, no one is wiping anybody out in rural Ireland. I mean it suits you to create the storm and to have rooms saying the government's going to do this, the government's going to do that. Everyone in this House, by the way, let's get the background to this, agreed that housing was the number one priority, or at least I thought it was the number one priority facing this Dáil at the commencement of the Dáil. And so the objective in terms of the short term legislation is actually to get more houses back into the rental market. Now the policy decision we've taken, which you're well aware of, is that it relates to towns over 20,000. So that excludes straight away all of the Western seaboard, North Western seaboard, all the way along. We're looking at towns and cities above 20,000 people. Now planning law is planning law. Okay, the seven-year rule is there. Basically if you're operating an Airbnb for seven years, you don't need planning permission, is my understanding. It's my layperson's articulation of it, but essentially it'd be quite difficult in enforcing anything on you at that stage. I'm sure you'd accept that. I mean, you're wily enough now in terms of the planning issues as they affect people. So I'm sure you'd agree that's the position. Now, there is an EU directive governing this as well, and that's governing all of Europe. And so we do in the cities want less of the short term, less, we want more housing, because we do need more housing for younger people. People are arguing about the rents being high. We need more supply. And there's an issue there. And I think you should acknowledge that. It's not a foolish idea. There's a logic behind it, and there's rationale behind it. So the fundamental objective is to continue to support tourism in those areas where tourism is a key industry. And that's all along the Western seaboard, Southwest, the West and the Northwest, and along the East Coast, Southeast Coast, and so on like that. So they're all well below the 20,000 threshold. And the idea is to balance the need for long term housing supply, greater housing availability, whilst also protecting rural and regional tourism and jobs. And the National Register is to be compiled by Foyle to Airden for short term net providers. It's to be established by Foyle to Ireland. And there are, so the issue is still being examined at government in terms of the planning statement and so on, and how to enable people to adjust to the situation, the policy position that we've identified and announced. Thank you very much. And thank you Taoiseach for your reply. You say I create a storm. This has been talked about for two years. And you can't, mother of God, sorry. They're ringing me. Sorry. You're talking about creating a storm. This is a serious storm for the people that are facing a crisis at this moment. That they're talking about signing up to something on the 20th of May. It's like you, if you have a checkbook there in the morning and you sign your name, but you just give a blank check. Are people going to have to sign up on the 20th of May to a blank check? That's what we're asking. All they're asking for is clear guidelines as to what is going ahead. Are they going to have to sign up to something that they don't know what they're signing up to? It's no point in you saying here that this might be the way or that might be. And that's the way you see it. The way the other people out there, I'm not in the business, but the other people out there see it totally and utterly different. And what they want is clarity. And that clarity should have been here months and months previously. We shouldn't be debating this in the dark, agree or disagree. When the government is a final position, there will be plenty of opportunity for debate in the Dáil. Plenty of opportunity. We're not rushing anything in. We're not going to ram anything through. And as I say, and just you need to be clear as well, always, long before any of this happened, change of use always required planning. You know that. Now you're pretending that the government has suddenly invented that. We haven't. You have, no, you've been around meetings, you're on Facebook every second night with a meeting here and a meeting there, a meeting here and a meeting there. And you're saying government is going to bring in this draconian law about change of use. Change of use has always been there. But look, we're very conscious and have been of the need to protect regional tourism, rural Ireland and the jobs that go there. That's why we took the population threshold of 20,000. And we will be back today.